


Each Against All

by AlleycatAngst, TesIsAMess



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Anarchy, Anxiety Attacks, Anxiety Disorder, Cats, Enemies to Friends, Friends to Enemies, Gen, Glitter, Hell. Michigan, Implied/Referenced Terrorism, Psychological Torture, Racism, Torture, Trouble, Undercover, Waterboarding, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 45,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21921736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlleycatAngst/pseuds/AlleycatAngst, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TesIsAMess/pseuds/TesIsAMess
Summary: A year after the uprising, Gavin's spinning his wheels in the DPD. Maybe it's got something to do with his open hatred of androids, but he's never been one to change when the world does.But its because of the tattoo on his neck and his ruthless ambition to climb the ladder that he'd make a perfect mole in an anti-droid network springing up around Michigan. It's a case controlled by the FBI, and it's a career booster, so he'll tolerate a rookie RK900 handler if that's what it takes.He thought that was going to be the hard part.*COMPLETE*Beautiful art by TesIsAMess. Every chapter with a (֍) contains her art!
Comments: 68
Kudos: 54
Collections: New ERA Discord: Winter Big Bang





	1. The Agency

Gavin hated the way they stared. Maybe it was because their eyes were too human. They stood in the dumpster. Crammed side-to-side, absolutely still, they all faced forward, patient and willing to listen to him as he hovered a gun in the air between them. Outside the alleyway, SWAT and police in riot gear were creating checkpoints.

The governor had declared martial law and it felt like the world was burning. Like the city was on fire and the sun would never rise.

The military had stopped trying to contain the problem. Stopped rounding them up int vans for testing or processing or whatever the hell Cyberlife was trying to do. They were just shooting them. He’d seen the banks of blue-stained snow and heard the firing squads echo down the streets, all over the city.

Crying. Screaming. Begging. Humans and androids alike.

This was robot fucking apocalypse. Doomsday. If he wasn’t so drunk he might be quaking under a table. Or out with a rifle, hunting these fuckers down himself.

But this was all happen-stance.

His prisoners had obediently switched their skinthetic off when he’d asked them to—but there was no changing those eyes, glowing with an inner light. He was drunk, the kind of drunk where his limbs felt heavy and the world tipped with every blink of his eyes.

He smoked clumsily, bumping the cigarette against his lips, misjudging the distance of his hand to his face.

The snow burnt against his skin, fighting a losing battle against the furnace under his skin, fueled by rage, fear, and alcohol.

Sirens whined on every street corners, every TV screen in the city linked to a broadcast was displaying the same repetitive message— _Lock your doors. Do not approach the doors and windows. Do not trust your androids. Repeat: Lock your doors. Do not—_

SWAT in black armor swarmed the street, hunting down confused androids who had been shoved out into the snow by terrified families and businesses. So many of them— _so many_. Dozens on every block, hundreds on every city. Thousands to every neighborhood.

The one’s he’d rounded up were wearing maintenance uniforms. They’d just… popped out of the sewers like rats. He held them at gunpoint, but they didn’t even seem to see the weapon. They’d obeyed him quickly and efficiently and even called him _Detective_ once they’d seen the badge clipped to his belt.

Because androids were programmed to cooperate with the police.

Or they were lulling him into a false sense of security.

Because that’s what deviants _did_. They obeyed right up until they didn’t and then they retaliated with brutal force. He worked homicide. He’d seen the crime scenes. He’d known where this was going the moment he’d set eyes on that fucking RK800 in the station— the _deviant_ hunter.

Setting a lion to herd cats.

The snow felt softly and silently. Between the shouts and the gunfire and the sirens, it was almost peaceful.

The scent of gasoline was sharp and clear. Chemical and pure. He loved the smell of gasoline, but it didn’t mix well with the alcohol already in his system. He felt sick. Afraid.

They stared at him. Waiting for something.

The gun wavered in the air, heavy and solid. He gripped onto it, leaning after it like it was his guide in a storm.

“Close your eyes,” he commanded, his voice grinding out of his throat deepened with whiskey and smoke and the cold air sweeping from the river.

Without protest of question, they all, in sync, closed their pale white eyelids.

“Fucking plastics,” he said.

And flicked his cigarette into the dumpster.

Fire arced over their casings. They didn’t open their eyes. They didn’t react at all.

 _Androids can’t feel pain_.

But Gavin watched them burn until their thirium caught and the blaze got too hot to stand. Only then did he stumbled away, out into the chaos on the streets and the war for Detroit.

#

CHAPTER ONE

Reed hunched over his whiskey and scratched harshly at his left ear. After three months of prison soap and over-starched clothes, _everything_ itched. Why did no one ever talk about that? His hands and face were chapped, his skin was _still_ burnt from whatever they washed the blankets in, and his hair simultaneously felt greasy and gritty.

Lockup had been even less fun than advertised, and the case was no further along than when he’d been recruited for this case. That was maybe the only thing more irritating than the fucking _itching_.

He’d had one simple job inside—connect with. Gordon Rasa and Bentley Anders. The two men had brutally killed two still-unidentified androids at the Detroit harbor and even at trial, given no reason for it. Even inside, serving life sentences, they’d kept their heads down, and hadn’t said a word to anyone. Anders had been Gavin’s goddamn cellmate, and Gavin hadn’t managed to get more than a dozen words out of the prick in _three months_.

He’d all but given up on this undercover bullshit when his cellmate had quietly suggested he go have a drink once he was out. It would have been innocuous if it wasn’t the only goddamn thing Anders had said to Gavin in three months of living in uncomfortably close quarters.

Gavin’s shirt and pants were just on the edge of being out of style and belonged to a slightly thinner man. He’d been proud of those details when he’d been picking out the costume of a man who’d spent far more than three months in prison, but he hadn’t taken his own discomfort into account at the time. The seams pinched at his shoulders and waist and the jeans were _way_ too goddamn tight around his hips.

He kept his head down and avoided all eye contact, especially with the bartender stopped in front of him, his hands on the taps like a sailor on his ship’s rigging.

Finally, recognizing that Gavin was going to be a prick about this, the man cleared his throat.

“You wanna use the phone?” he asked.

Gavin slowly turned his eyes upward. The bartender was a generic amalgamation of his patrons-- bald with a long, greying beard, two full sleeves of tattoos and one pierced ear. His blue eyes twinkled in the low bar lights as he returned Gavin’s stony gaze with a blank, friendly one of his own.

“I’m waiting for a taxi,” Gavin said at last.

The other man nodded easily. “We got self-driving models outside, you know. They’re state mandated, ready whenever you want to leave.”

“I ordered a human driver,” Gavin growled. “Why? You kickin’ me out already?”

The barman shook his head, dragging two shot glasses from under the bar and put them carefully in front of Gavin, showing off the red triangle tattooed onto the back of his hand, the tip pointing towards his fingers.

The symbol of human supremacy and the anti-droid movement.

“No son, I’m just looking out for my fellow man.”

Gavin touched the same symbol inked on his neck, just below his left ear, as if he’d forgotten it was there. As if that wasn’t _why_ he’d been picked for this job. The brand almost a year old. He’d gotten it in a drunken, rage-fueled act of rebellion just a few days after the rebellion.

The symbol of human supremacy and the anti-droid movement.

Fowler had been… very displeased. But it’d been worth it to see Connor’s face every time the android caught sight of it—that double take and discomfort.

“Right,” he said, relaxing his posture and watching as his new friend drew out two generous shots. “Right… thanks.”

“Name’s Ted,” the bartender informed him.

Their glasses connected with a dull chime, and they simultaneously took their shots. Whisky. Neat. The alcohol raced down his throat and settled into his stomach, loosening his whole body. He coughed through the burn. “Fuck,” he wheezed. “That’s the… fuckin… good stuff. Thanks, Ted.”

His new friend grinned and set down his own empty shot, quick to pour out another one. “How long were you inside?”

Grimacing, Gavin reset his shoulders, glancing around the smoky interior of the bar. Despite the early hour, it was hardly empty. This was a local place, the kind that could only exist in the backwoods of nowhere these days. “It’s that obvious?” he asked, lowering his voice.

Ted shrugged. “I’m guessing you asked for the closest bar to Oaks once you got out. We’re a… preferred destination for the Warden’s one free ride, so I recognize you boys pretty quick.”

Two years,” Gavin said. The second shot went down smoother. The lie rolled easily from his tongue. He’d rehearsed it often enough. “But I only spent the last three months in Oaks.”

“Shit,” the man commiserated. “World changes fast these days. Two years is the new twenty.”

Gavin grunted. “Tell me about it,” he said. “I remember when the ‘bots were rich-boy toys. And then last week my parole officer comes to meet me, part of this new ‘meet-and-greet behind bars’, and guess what?”

“Plastic?” the barman guessed, nodding, filling up the glass again.

“Plastic. A goddamn plastic parole officer. Should just move to fuckin’ Russia. Droids there at least know their fuckin’ place. None of this _deviant_ bullshit.” He downed the third shot and slammed the glass on the bar like he was trying to smash it. Wisely, Ted pulled it away and set it behind the bar.

“People aren’t looking to hire ex-cons,” he said calmly, “Not when there’s droids with resumes that can just fuckin’ download their goddamn careers.”

“Yeah, thanks for the fuckin’ news bulletin.”

But Ted just smiled. “Rasa and Anders said you were a cop.”

Gavin stiffened, narrowing his eyes. So the two were in contact with the outside. Somehow. “Ex-cop,” he spat, tensing at the accusation. “I’m not a fucking cop anymore.”

“Well, they sure made sure of that,” Ted said calmly. “Pity—a few more men like you in law enforcement and we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Rounding up plastics and burning them before they could go deviant? That’s _god’s_ work you were doing. And then inside, every other day plastics dragging you away to solitary and you _still_ kept fighting.”

It was the record the FBI had set up for him, word-for-word the story that had circulated the prison on his arrival. It wasn’t too far from the truth—a little too close for comfort, but he wasn’t in charge of his own cover story. Besides. No one knew about that night in the city—they couldn’t know his part in the battle.

And if he wanted to keep his job, it had to stay secret.

The shots had worked their magic fast. Gavin swayed against the bar. “What do you want?” he rasped.

Ted grinned, leaning forward. “I want to introduce you to someone,” he said. “Someone who can help you—give you a job, and a lot more if you want it. Humans gotta have each others backs, yeah?”

Shrewdly, Gavin frowned up at the bartender and took a risk. He couldn’t look too eager. He couldn’t look like he’d been _desperate_ for this chance. “I’m not looking to go back to where I just came from.”

“You won’t,” Ted promised, sliding a small scrap of paper across the bar to him, narrowly avoiding condensation from Gavin’s beer on its travel across the wooden countertop. “No more burning bots in back-alleys. We’re gonna take this nation back the _right_ way.”

#

Gavin kicked at one of the iron bollards outside the bar as pulled cleansing smoke into his lungs. He preferred cigarettes. The tactile feel of paper rolling between his fingers--- he’d fuckin missed it for the past three months. Oaks only allowed monitored vape-use during certain times of the day.

But he didn’t get more than a few pulls in before a car appeared between the trees, turning off from the main road and into Ted’s Bar. It was an old model, old enough to have both manual and automatic driving settings. A chipped and scratched ‘ _Driver’_ sign on the roof was the only indication that it wasn’t actually auto-driving itself.

Ex-cons couldn’t hire the automatic ones anyway-- they required a phone, and a phone required credit. Credit required an ID, and Gavin wasn’t even sure the temporary one provided by the prison would work in a grocery store.

He flicked the ash from his cigarette with one hand, and kept his other in his pocket, clenched around the slip of paper Ted had given him. On it, two words had been printed in surprisingly neat handwriting.

 _ORION_ – _Hell._

He hadn’t asked what that was supposed to mean. Ted wouldn’t have answered anyway. This was part of the recruitment ritual—a trial of commitment.

The window rolled down as the car approached. Gavin leaned forward to see inside. “You call for a ride?” the driver asked.

It was Gavin’s supervisory agent—Lucas. The RK900 was wearing a bandana tied around its head and thick-lensed glasses, a thin mustache shadowing its upper lip. Whatever effect the android agent had been going for it certainly wasn’t _human._ No human would ever leave the house looking like that. They’d probably get sectioned.

“Yeah,” he said, catching the door handle as the car stopped on the gravel. He climbed in, feeling clumsy and warmed by alcohol, and slammed the door behind him. Safely inside, he sat back. “You look fuckin’ ridiculous,” he informed the android he hadn’t seen in over three months.

He’d worked with other nines before, and they were all much the same in the end-- only a little more bearable than Anderson’s plastic prick. “You made contact?” the agent asked.

“Yeah,” Gavin grinned.

The bureau had needed a human to fit in with a bunch of backwoods anti-droid insurgents and Gavin came with the requisite blood-drop tattoo on his neck and a willingness to go to prison for three months, because yeah, what the fuck else was he going to do? His job was his life, and cooperating with the FBI on an investigation would look _damn_ good in his file.

In no time at all, they were back on the road, and Lucas turned, letting the car’s automatic systems take over. “What happened?” the android asked.

Gavin grinned lazily at the RK900. “Best job interview I’ve ever been on.”

“You’re drunk,” the android observed.

“Yeah, and for free too.” Gavin straightened his back and drummed his hands on his knees. “We’re fuckin’ _in_ ,” he said cheerfully. He hadn’t been so happy and relaxed in months. It was over, he was out, and the _real_ work could start.

“I feel it is too early to be celebrating.”

“Come on tin-can, I just got out of _prison_. I want some food. I want some _music_.”

“We have to assume you’re being watched at all times,” Lucas said stiffly. “I’m taking you directly to your new apartment.”

“Oh yeah, that’s gonna look very-unsuspicious. Man gets out of prison, has one drink, and then quietly finds his tiny government-subsidized apartment to sleep it off?”

The android hesitated. “It was obviously more than one drink,” it said, because clearly, it could find nothing else to fight.

“We _have_ to assume I’m being watched,” Gavin stressed mockingly. “At _all_ times. Besides, it’s a long drive back to the city, I’m gonna need food at least.”

It cocked its head at him. “Okay,” it said evenly. “We’ll stop for food.”

#


	2. Flaws

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part two of chapter 1, such a big chunk didn't feel fair

They stopped in front of a burger joint—one with plastic seats and garish, over-colored advertisements pasted to the windows. Lucas’s car groaned to a stop directly in front of the doors.

As the alcohol had soured in his stomach and he was starting to feel breathless, a strange fog of anger and detachment blooming in his head. Gavin’s hands had started to shake

_Not here. Not now._

“Really?” Gavin snarled. “First day out in two months and you’re taking me _here_?”

The agent paused, looking through the windshield at the brightly-lit restaurant. “According to your bank statements,” it said. “You frequently enjoy fast-food franchises such as this one.”

“You looked through my bank statements?”

“Of course. When you took the case, you signed over permission for an extensive background check and, in preparation to be your handler, I did--:

“You’re not gonna handle anything about me,” Gavin snarled. “I get you’re the FBI and I’m the turncoat you need to make this case, but I’m _not_ on your fuckin’ leash.”

Lucas blinked at him. “I… don’t know what to say to that,” it said at last.

“Great, then stay in the car,” Gavin growled, pushing the door open and stepping outside into the cold.

“Wait—What? No—”

He could hear Lucas’s door disengage from its frame, the FBI agent starting to follow him, and he ducked down to meet the android’s gaze across the console before it could get out of the car. “Listen, you look like what a robot thinks a human should look like. A human with a glasses prescription like that is probably legally blind. You’ve got a fucking _bandana_ around your head like _that_ ’s the distraction from your LED, and you’re wearing a leather jacket like it’s the middle of winter or something. It’s embarrassing. Frankly, it’s racist, and I don’t wanna be seen in public with you.”

“I didn’t mean to offend—"

“Oh, _please_ shut the fuck up,” Gavin snapped, stepping away and slamming the door behind him.

The shakes were working their way up his arms, to his shoulders. He started to shiver and that was the _last_ thing he needed this RK prick to see.

He slammed the doors open, and hoped that his anger would mask his fear.

There was no line, no one else in the restaurant, just two bored teenagers working the register and the ovens. It had been a while since he’d seen that—humans working in these places. Now of course all the goddamn androids had better things to do, like work at the goddam FBI.

He ordered his food quickly: two cheeseburgers, two fries and the largest drink size on the menu. He saw the young cashier’s eyes catch on his tattoo, her lips tightening in distaste, but he didn’t give a shit. Let them spit in his fucking food—he had bigger problems.

The cup she handed over might as well have been a bucket. He wasted no time, tossing his empty cup on one of the nearby tables and pushing into the bathroom.

Fuck, it had stalls—no way to lock the goddamn door. Nowhere to run.

He put his back to the door, and slid down until he was on his knees. He curled forwards, wrapping his arms around himself in an effort to stop shaking. _Fuck. Fuck. Fuck_.

This wasn’t supposed to happen again. This was supposed to _stop._ He wasn’t in a cage, he wasn’t surrounded by enemies, lying every day to save his own life. He was safe now. The attacks were supposed to _stop_ now.

He couldn’t sit still. He unwrapped his arms. He barely had control of his hands and slammed them against the floor.

 _Assume you’re being watched_. The light was harsh and the floor was weirdly sticky against his palms. He retched mutely against the tiles. He was ruined. He was compromised. Everything was going to be taken away because he couldn’t hold his _shit_ together.

 _How much do you want this, Reed?_ Fowler had asked him, in his office, the first time he had met with Agent Lucas and accepted this job. _How far are you willing to go, really_? _You can’t piss this one off._

Anything. Anything. Anything. He’d do fucking _anything_. This was the break he needed. He could go to prison for three months. Just three months. He had no pets, no family, just an apartment he could rent out while he was gone for a bit of extra cash.

He could work with an RK, he’d done it before. He could infiltrate a gang and sell them out no problem. Loyalty meant nothing to him.

His breath came ragged and uneven. This was worse than it’d ever been before. Maybe he was dying. Maybe Ted had poisoned him in the bar, and he was going to die here, like this. What a fuckin’ _embarrassment_ —

The door moved at his back and reflexively he shoved back against it, snapping it closed.

“Sir?” it was one of the teenagers. “Sir, you’ve been in there for umm… your food is ready?”

He couldn’t speak. Weakly, he patted the door, trying to assure them that he was fine and that they should go away. But that only seemed to raise the kid’s alarm. “Sir? Sir, do you need help? Is everything—”

“Reed?” A new voice, a familiar one. The god damn FBI android. “Reed, if you can, get away from the door.”

 _It’s not locked you fucking idiot. I don’t want you to come in._ Gavin tried to force the curses out of his mouth, but he couldn’t find his voice. He didn’t have the breath. He half-crawled, half-fell away from the door. As his weight disappeared, it opened, framing a young employee clutching a mop and a tall android with a foot raised in preparation to kick the thin barrier down. Had it even _tried_ the handle?

It took only a second for the scene to register to Lucas. Gavin on the floor, shivering uncontrollably. “I’m calling an ambulance,” the RK said instantly, pushing past the kid and kneeling at Gavin’s side.

“Don’t…” Gavin spat, flinching away from the android’s touch, fighting his throat, his tongue, his goddamn _teeth_ to get the words out in a long, laborious string and still somehow breathe. “Don’t you… dare.”

He swore he could _feel_ the scans going through him, the RK looking for broken bones, swelling organs, any symptoms that would explain this behavior. “What have you taken?” the android asked him. “How much?”

 _Drugs_ , the fucking thing thought he was on _drugs_.

Well… probably fair, but he couldn’t formulate an answer through the need to breathe, and the RK900 quickly and efficiently swiped a hand across his face, gathering sweat and blood, tears and mucus, Too late, Gavin realized what it was doing as it licked the fluids from its palm.

His stomach rolled again, twisting even tighter.

Gross. Gross. Fucking _gross_.

“ _Adrenaline_?” the agent asked, its eyebrows raising. “Why would you—” and _finally_ it seemed to understand. “Anxiety. You’re having a panic attack.”

Gavin nodded, but the gesture was somewhat masked by the shivers forcing their way through his limbs “What medications are you taking?” Lucas asked efficiently, backing away, its hands raised in clear view. “Do you have an acute dose? Where is it?”

And somehow that broke through the strange mixture of humiliation and fear. The RK with all the answers, who knew _nothing_. Fuck. His career was over before it ever started. _Medications?_ The Android had read his goddamn bank statements, it had to know that Gavin wasn’t on any medications.

Words came just a little bit easier now. The RK would have picked up on any poisons or physical sickness. It was just adrenaline. Just complete and uncontrollable fear and panic. “I told you,” he rasped. “To stay in the fucking car.”

#

His food was cold by the time they staggered out of the dingy restrooms. The teenagers offered to make it again, both wide-eyed and eager to help, if only to break the monotony of their shift. Lucas waved them away before Gavin could find the right words to spit at them.

“He’s fine,” the FBI android said. “He’ll be fine.”

Gavin’s head ached and his joints were swollen and sore from being pressed against the bathroom tiles. Still, he walked on his own, shaking through the echoes of sickness and the cold set deep into his bones.

Lucas had offered him its jacket, to fight off the shivers wracking his body, but that was a step too far. He wasn’t going to let Lucas turn him into a helpless little nutcase because of this. Fine, he couldn’t be in on the operation, his one chance to work with the FBI blown because of… because of _this_ , but he’d be damned if he was going to let the android make him feel any more inferior.

Lucas opened the door for him, like he was some pitiful invalid who would wilt at even the slightest exertion. Gavin didn’t have the energy to fight it. He slid into the car and slammed the door as he waited for Lucas to round the bonnet and take the driver’s seat.

The fries were cold and greasy, but the salt at least chased the sourness from his mouth. He ate them one-by one, ignoring the packets of ketchup at the bottom of the packet. The engine grumbled to life and, without prompting, Lucas turned the heat all the way on, flipping the vents to focus on Gavin.

Who said nothing.

Eventually it was Lucas who broke the silence. “You should see a doctor,” it said.

“No.”

Lucas’s hands tightened on the wheel—a perfect ten-and-two position despite the fact that it wasn’t controlling the car. “How long have you—"

“The attacks started on the third day inside.” Gavin mumbled through his first cheeseburger. He wasn’t hungry, but he thought it might give them both an excuse not to talk about this. “It usually comes at night. I wake up and… the room is spinning. Takes me hours to get back to sleep. If I felt it coming in the day, I’d give the signal to isolate me.”

“I knew you spent over two weeks in total in solitary confinement,” the FBI agent said softly. “I wondered... but I didn’t know…”

“It got me a reputation,” Gavin said. “And that’s why I was there in the first place. It was fine, really. I thought… I thought it was just… because I was behind bars or something.”

“It’s a disorder, not something that you can—”

“Shut up, I know, okay? I know. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Lucas left it alone for all of two seconds before asking yet another stupid question. “Why did you never report this in your briefings?”

Gavin shrugged and wrapped up his half-eaten burger, dumping it in the packet with the rest of the food he wasn’t going to eat tonight. “My cellmate slept like the dead, and who else would have cared? I was still working, I could still… make contacts. I could still do my job.”

But that was over now. He didn’t need Lucas to say it. He dug the slip of paper from his pocket and set it on the dashboard between them. It was crumpled slightly from Gavin’s rough handling. ‘ _ORION—Hell’_

As Lucas delicately picked up the scrap of evidence, the first solid lead that this anti-droid network existed, Gavin looked out of the window, to the streaks of light passing by their car.

“ORION is an abbreviation, an acronym for ‘Our Race Is Our Nation’—the Anti-droid gangs were obsessed with shit like that,” he offered bleakly. “I guess there’s not much else to do inside, other than sit around making up fuckin… acronyms.”

“And Hell?” Lucas mused. “Our Race Is Our Nation—Hell? That doesn’t sound particularly… rousing.”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

“There’s a town called Hell, Michigan. It’s only an hour’s drive from the city.”

“Seems like a good place to start,” Gavin agreed sourly. The first big break in the case after three months and he’d fucked everything up. Royally. He’d be taken off the case, reported to Fowler and the captain would raise an eyebrow and ask him—

“Are you alright?”

They were travelling fast now, on clear roads. These were heavily wooded parts of Detroit, populated with lakes, mountains, and small suburban townships.

“Fuckin’ perfect,” Gavin said.

He pushed his head against the glass. It felt good, solid, and the vibrations from the engine calmed the bubble of sickness still expanding in his chest.

“This is my first case as an official agent,” Lucas said at last, its voice almost lost in the moan of the road and the wind. Gavin glanced over at it, seeing clearly the android’s obvious unwillingness to disclose this. “I don’t have… experience with these kinds of operations—only what I’ve seen in records and what I can extrapolate from reports. I’ve examined every lecture given at Quantico given over the last twenty years, read every textbook from cover to cover, but I’ve only ever handled… reports. I’m not even a special agent, I don’t have the authority to make arrests.”

That… tracked. Nothing about this had felt particularly right. From the moment Gavin had agreed to this case in Fowler’s office, he’d felt it in his bones, like a storm on the horizon.

“I don’t blame you,” Lucas continued. “For distrusting me. I don’t know anything about humans. I don’t know how your memory works, or how you process ideas. I can recite books, laws, financial records, but finding evidence requires that I know what I’m looking for. I just don’t even know what _questions_ to ask. I have almost no oversight on this operation.”

Gavin had never seen an android look ashamed, eyes drawn down, shoulders bent inward with a sudden loss of confidence. But that’s what this was. “My supervisor is a human and because our victims are unidentifiable and untraceable, he can throw me at the problem and work on more… pressing cases. Other agents have called him ‘The Jackal’ and for good reason. He is ruthless and does not appear to care about the cases or victims as much as… the outcome of the investigation and his own career.”

“So you’re complaining about being unqualified and unsupervised,” Gavin growled. “Yeah, pardon me if I don’t get my violin out.”

The FBI android ignored that, plowing on as if the words were being forced from its synthetic lips. “I have been… advised not to ask too many questions and to requisition as few resources as possible, in order to prove the… effectiveness of androids in the field. The expectation is that I will handle this on my own and that I will find the most strategic and collateral-thin strategy to close down this criminal network. A network which, quite honestly, poses little of a threat. A thinly-spread pattern of ex-convicts committing Anti-android hate crimes is not high on the FBI’s list of priorities. On _anyone_ ’s list of priorities. Even New Jericho has bigger problems right now.”

For the first time since he’d gotten into the car, the RK900 looked at him. The agent’s gaze was direct, honest. “I am the first android unit given clearance to work investigations for the FBI. This case is my … field test. If I am successful, I will be the first android special agent. I can promise that we will have backup _if_ something goes wrong, but until then… we’re on our own.”

Gavin straightened in his seat, his heart clenching painfully with sudden hope. “You’re keeping me on?” he asked in disbelief. “After… all that? You aren’t going to report me to Fowler, get me strapped down to a desk?”

“I need your help,” the android said simply. “You’ve already sacrificed a great deal to get us to this point. Three months of your life, and I know how valuable time is to humans. You’re qualified and prepared for this case, and you… you want this as much as I do. We don’t have to like each other. If you think you can do this, if you say you can handle it, I’ll report around… the issue. I can find a way to keep it off the record, and after the case, we can find a way to frame it… properly.”

“I can handle it,” Gavin said instantly.

He watched Lucas nod. In the darkness, looking at the android, Gavin realized there was something else missing, not just the glasses and the scarf and the stupid fooling-no-one facial hair. “What happened to your LED?” he asked.

Lucas didn’t look away from the road as it scraped a tiny silver chip out of the cupholder, a familiar little circle. “I removed it before I came in,” it said steadily. “You were right, my attempts to disguise my nature were… foolish, and when you did not return to the car… I did not want to blow your cover on the chance that you had been tracked. Though I do not think we were observed, I do promise, Detective Reed, that your safety _is_ important to me.”

What could he say to that? _Thanks_? He didn’t know what the criteria for LED removal was or what removal even meant to androids. Some had them and some didn’t, but the way the android said it—it felt personal. He settled back into his seat, his chest churning with a hundred emotions he couldn’t comb through just yet.

He grinned. “Yeah. Alright,” he said. “Let’s go to Hell.”

###


	3. A Warm Welcome (֍)

Gavin ran through his psych check-in without a hitch, lying through his teeth and only feeling the barest tinge of guilt for it. He and the agent hadn’t talked about his attack since that night, but it loomed in every conversation.

The tenuous dance of talking around the issue was very… human. He found it strangely reassuring that Lucas felt as awkward as he did about his mental health and the omissions they told to their respective offices. Mutually assured destruction of the case at least gave him the illusion of control.

Lucas had wanted to come with him, but the android’s face was practically in the public domain thanks to Connor’s role in the uprising. Wherever Ted was sending him, it was a _bad_ idea to be seen with an android. That much at least was certain.

Pretty much _only_ that was certain.

Also, the android dressed in _nonsense_. It wasn’t just… a human costume it’d put on the night it’d picked Gavin up from Teddy’s bar. The android actually seemed to be in the middle of a goddamn glitch— It wore… ponchos. And skirts. And hats—the hats were the worst of it—Lucas would wear any style or color, without no rhyme or reason put to it.

In Fowlers office, at the beginning of the case, it’d been dressed in a black suit which Gavin had found reassuring—it was as close to a cyberlife-tailored suit as one could get without seeming… out-of-touch in this day and age.

But at least it had seemed professional.

Hell was fifty miles from Detroit, only an hour’s drive from the center of the city, but it took three days for Gavin to make his way there. Over-eagerness would make any new contact wary, and the timing was important. He had to seem hesitant, curious. He had to play a long game very safe, or he and Agent Lucas were going back to their respective offices with their tails between their legs and all this time wasted.

The main street had obviously seen an influx of tourism, runoff population and money from Detroit and it had leaned, hard, into its name. Cartoon devils cavorted in windows, and the streets were named on theme: _Satan’s Hills Road, Sin Street,_ and _Infernal Boulevard._ Still, there was a degree of innocent festivity to the devilish ambiance—more mischievous than macabre.

The buildings along the main street had been remodeled recently and the sidewalks were paved with smooth ornamental cobblestones. The aesthetic colors and shapes of Cyberlife had dominated the landscape of Michigan for almost a decade, and it now it was almost startling to see the rejection of minimalist lines and colors.

Here, natural chaos was emphasized. Hell sat in a belt of forests, lakes, and streams that cut diagonally across the state and led into Canada. The rough terrain had encouraged rugged hedges and wild-growing flowers to climb over walls and fences, lending a strange, abandoned look to the whole place.

And not a single android walked the streets. It took a while for Gavin to notice that, but once he had it was impossible _not_ to see it. Detroit was overrun with androids, unnatural people with perfect posture, symmetrical bodies, and identical faces. Their absence, once noted, prickled the back of his neck.

It felt… eerie.

 _ORION—Hell._ The connection to this pinprick on the map was starting to feel stronger.

Was he supposed to visit a bar? Look on corkboards for the nearest Anti-droid meetup?

His car wouldn’t autopilot without a set destination, so he had no choice but to drive manually, craning his neck to look through the windows, out at the streets.

He had changed tactics and was looking for a place to eat lunch when he saw it-- Spread across a long brick wall was a mural of a warrior in golden armor, a shield upraised on his left forearm, his other hand wielding a short sword over his head. Nineteen points on the mural had been emphasized, their brightness emulated with stark white paint.

A constellation that by now Gavin was sick of looking at.

He parked directly in front of the mural, locking his car against public use as he frowned at the artwork. A clear representation of Orion.

Back at the FBI field office, Lucas had spent what felt like hours reciting knowledge about the constellation from the various myths around the world, scientific names of each of the stars, and two dozen theories about _why_ Orion might be the rallying point of an anti-android criminal network.

Gavin had scoffed at it all. There was no evidence that the network they were infiltrating was complex, organized, or intelligent enough to come up with _reasons_ for things. O.R.I.O.N. was one of the few acronyms that actually made a word, and the anti-droid population in prison rallied around the ‘cleverness’ of it. Never mind that their hundred other acronyms like Race Over All and Supreme Human Power, R.O.A. and S.H.P. made no contextual sense.

Yet here was the proof that they were taking this ORION treasure-hunt nonsense seriously. They’d actually employed an _artist._

Stepping back a few paces, Gavin slipped his phone from his pocket and took a picture of the mural, getting as much in frame as possible before sending it off to Lucas. Almost instantly a reply appeared on his screen.

\-- _That’s Orion, the Hunter._

 _\--No, really?_ he typed back.

_\--Yes—from the star constellation, Orion. You may be familiar with his belt?_

_\--Yeah, I know. We talked about all that shit back at the apartment,_ Reed swiped back quickly. _I’m not exactly sightseeing out here, dipshit. Why do you think I sent you the picture?_

For a solid minute, no answer popped onto the screen. He raised his eyebrows at the pause. He’d never had to _wait_ for an android to respond before. He leaned back against the wall and stared down at his chat, slapping his phone against his palm as he waited for whatever long-winded novel of an explanation the RK900 was drafting.

But what he got was: -- _I apologize._

Shaking his head, Gavin erased the messages and slipped his phone back into his pocket as he rounded the corner to check the front of the building. It looked sort of like a church, an old, two-or-three story building with a high roof, flat walls, and high bow-windows.

But when he came to the front, he realized his mistake. It wasn’t a church. It was the god-damned City Hall.

#

Lucas rubbed at his temple, feeling the distinct lack of an LED like an itch _inside_ his casing. _Cosmetic. It’s just cosmetic._ If he pressed hard enough, he could feel the dimple in his casing where it should sit. He’d been hiding the blank space with hats, but being outside… he felt vulnerable without it.

An irrational feeling. An LED didn’t make him any more of an android.

But he hadn’t gone to the station yet, instead coming here, to Reed’s cover-apartment. He was supposed to be liaising with Detective Reed’s office, but the RK800 was there, as well as half a dozen androids. They’d register the change instantaneously, and even if they didn’t mention it, it would be in the air between them, rooted in their subsystems: _You chose a side._

Irrational. Very irrational. Dangerous even. He wasn’t supposed to see _sides_. He wasn’t supposed to be ashamed of his LED, or his lack of it.

But he couldn’t… stop the thoughts either. He’d honestly thought Reed had forgotten the briefing on Orion. Human memory was fragile, easily wiped away by distraction. He’d been trying to be _kind._ He was trying to be _patient._ But he’d just made everything worse.

He looked down at his clothing for the day. He could see nothing to complain about. Maybe he had started the case in an approximation of a human… costume, but now, after the revelation that all clothes were human and android clothes… the choices scared him. It seemed like every item was meant to speak for him—but he had no idea what it was saying. In the field office, Perkins had enforced a strict dress code, but given choice, Lucas had panicked.

_Frankly, it’s racist._

That, coming from a man branded with a blood-drop tattoo—the downward-pointing red triangle of anti-deviance—it shouldn’t have stung as much as it had. Reed was a violent bigot. That had been clearly established. The RK800 Connor had tagged his file with a encoded warning for any androids that accessed it: _Given my interactions with him, I find it likely that he has killed androids and feels little remorse._

Even without that encrypted warning, Gavin had made his side _very_ clear. He’d gotten the blood-drop days after the revolution, and now, almost a year later, the human had been given plenty of opportunities to have it removed. Every day had been an opportunity to accept change, the new order of the world.

But he hadn’t.

Still. That didn’t make him expendable.

Lucas closed his eyes. Even though this case was small, he was still risking Reed’s life. More so now that he was pretending the man’s… illness wasn’t a vulnerability in the field. _We have the opportunity to be better_ , Josh had said, when he’d awoken in a container with his RK900 siblings in D.C. _We have… to be better._

This didn’t feel like _better_.

Restless, he straightened his collar running through his calibrations with precision and care. Detective Reed’s cover apartment was small, but the human had settled in immediately, without hesitation.

The apartment had come with some furniture—less than a hotel room would have, and far worse quality. A few items of clothing hung up in the closet. In the bathroom, toothpaste, shaving cream, and a toothbrush occupied the cracked and stained sink and the refrigerator house only a bottle of ketchup and four bottles beers, somehow obviously not bought to be shared. The space felt… lonely. Spartan, but obviously familiar to the Detective.

Lucas settled into the chair that had come with the room and closed his eyes. He couldn’t decide whether it was pity or hatred he was feeling. He’d never realized how much the emotions had in common.

A diagnostics check was probably in order.

#

Gavin jogged up the steps and peered into the large bow windows of the city hall. He couldn’t make much out of the inside, only the glint of smooth white tiles on the floor. He pushed the door open and the bells hung above it tinkled pleasantly, announcing his entrance.

This was unnecessary. A woman stood at the counter on the right side of the room. Her face and shoulders were hidden in shadow, light shafting through the high windows cut across her torso, revealing a floral dress and hands at ease on the table.

“Good Morning, sir!” she said brightly, not moving from the shadows. “Welcome to Hell!”

By the context he supposed this was supposed to be a joke, but her voice didn’t leave a pause for a laugh. She seemed to be waiting for something.

“Right… yeah. Thanks, I think,” Gavin said, pausing in the entrance. He looked over his shoulder, to the bright main street, digging his thumb in the direction of the mural outside. “I was just… I saw that mural outside. Orion, right?”

“And what’s your name?” she asked, her voice becoming more business-like, her well-manicured hands slipping into darkness below the countertop.

Gavin tensed. His training was telling him that she was reaching for a weapon. _Never let their hands disappear_ , it was a common mantra in the academy: _Count the hands_.

He didn’t have his gun. _Why_ hadn’t Lucas let him have a gun? “Uh, why do you need to know my name?” he asked.

Her hands reappeared with a slip of paper, a form of some kind. He didn’t really feel anymore relaxed by that. “Do you have a reference?” she asked, skipping past his reluctance. She sounded like a pre-deviate android, her voice carefully devoid of any inflection but pleasant helpfulness.

“I was just asking about the mural?” he said, stepping into the shadows to see her properly. “I’m looking for the artist. I don’t know what you think I’m …”

She was an android—but not like one he’d ever seen before. Her face-plate had been stripped away, taking with it her nose, eyelids and lips, leaving a dark void and a clear view of the delicate cooling fins of her processor and unlit components.

But it wasn’t the anatomy he’d seen on TV. She wasn’t running on thirium.

He stared. He couldn’t help but stare.

She turned and picked up a pen from the table at her back. Her joints moved smoothly in slightly exaggerated arcs, and when she stopped, the cessation was abrupt.

An automaton. But not a cyberlife model. Not… an android.

“Marvelous, isn’t she?”

Gavin nearly jumped out of his skin as the voice rang out from above him. He flinched back, reaching reflexively for the gun _not_ strapped to his chest.

“Ah,” the voice said, the shadows resolving into a man leaning against the railing on the floor above. “The cop? I think I’ve heard about you. Theo sent you down, didn’t he?”

“Ex-cop,” Gavin awkwardly patted his jacket down, pulling the fabric closer around his shoulders. “Who are you?” he asked.

“So my reputation has _not_ proceeded me,” the stranger said. He was a short man, stocky and cleanshaven with neatly shorn salt-and-pepper hair. He trailed his hand on the banister as he walked across the room to the stairs, forcing Gavin to turn and follow him. “Well, I suppose that it the point.”

“Orion?” Gavin hazarded.

“You can call me Ward, actually,” he said easily. “And you must be Gavin. Not what I pictured to be honest. More prison orange than lawman blue.”

“Yeah. Gavin Reed,” Gavin said.

Ward came off the steps and walked with confidence to Gavin, who fought the animal impulse to back away.

“Good to meet you Gavin. I apologize for the theatrics,” he said. “Unfortunately in this day and age we have to use all kinds of symbols and euphemisms to keep ourselves autonomous, and it does tend to weed out the less… focused of our applicants.”

“Applicants for what?” Gavin asked slowly.

“A job, of course,” Ward said. He smiled, the expression reaching his eyes. He couldn’t be over forty, but his presence _felt_ much older than that. “Theo really didn’t tell you anything?”

Gavin shook his head.

“Well, why don’t you fill that out,” Ward said, pointing to the document lying innocently on the countertop where the… machine had placed it. “Take care of all the formalities, and then we can talk… freely.”

Reed glanced down at the paperwork. There was space for his name, and address but beneath those empty boxes, there were paragraphs, tiny highlighted spaces for his initials. “What _is_ this? _”_

“A simple formality. You’ve already signed away more liberties to the US government than we’ll ever take, I promise you that.”

Squinting closer at the tiny letters, Gavin balked. “Unscheduled… search and seizure? Woah, no, wait. I’m _not_ signing this.”

Ward sighed, nodding sympathetically. “We live in a society.”

It sounded like the start of a sentence, but Ward stopped there. He gave no indication there was rhyme or reason to follow. Just that: _We live in a society_.

The silence between them grew. Ward didn’t move, the automaton stared sightlessly through the space between the two humans, its hands folded against its stomach. In the deepening stillness, it tipped its head sideways, a low whir vibrating from somewhere in its mechanics.

“Welcome to Hell!” it said brightly.

Ward huffed a laugh, leaning against the desk, relaxing like he was at a bar. “Just our little joke. Keeps the tourists coming back. And she fields all the questions while I handle… other things. You’re lucky to find me here actually, there’s usually a welcome wagon.”

Gavin didn’t answer. He was goddamn spooked. This felt wrong. Everything felt very, very wrong.

But that was why he was here. Lucas had spent days asking him these questions, making sure he would not slip up on where he had supposedly been in the last two days.

He met Ward’s vibrant green eyes. They sparkled in the daylight, and shadows caught in the wrinkles of a face that often smiled.

Gavin picked up the pen and pressed up against the bar as he looked down at the form. Whatever. These fuckers could dig all they liked. He _was_ Gavin Reed.

#

Lucas was only halfway through filtering his code, when the doorknob rattled on its rod. Immediately he registered the sound—not the scrape of a key, or the subtle shunt of pins sliding into place.

No. It was the stab of thin, sharp picks against delicate mechanics. Someone was coming in. Someone without a key.

He stood fluidly, pressing his back to the bedroom window.

Between trying to decide whether to call the police for backup or announce himself before the burglar could break through, someone pinged a background check on Gavin Reed.

Blinking rapidly, Lucas let the threads of his diagnostics go. Someone was attacking his carefully constructed records, pressing for weaknesses in the background check. School and medical files The faked dishonorable discharge backdated three years.

This was no random burglary, and he shouldn’t be here.

He scanned the room. Gavin’s gun was on the nightstand—a jarring inconsistency with the man who was supposed to be living in the apartment.

There was no time. Lucas crossed in front of the bedroom door, closing it as quickly and silently as possible. Just as the latch slid into place, unlocked, but at least _closed_ , he heard the front door click, the hinges protesting lightly.

The intruder was inside. Lucas had only bought a few seconds.

#


	4. Industrial Society and Its Future

Lucas swiped Gavin’s gun from the table, gripping the holster to the gun it contained. As quickly as he could, he ran Gavin’s medical records through to whoever was looking for them, changing out dates and places for a new timeline, one where the Detective had spent the past three years in prison.

They were running a warrant check too, bouncing their network around through proxy servers and remote devices. He couldn’t chase them too far or risked alerting them to his presence.

This couldn’t be a coincidence. This was no random burglary. Gavin, wherever he was, whatever he was doing, had set off _some_ kind of alarm.

They were sifting through Reed’s social media. Every account and timeline before and after incarceration. There was thankfully little work to be done. Reed had made no secret of his anti-droid affiliations and opinions—one of the reasons Lucas had chosen him for the job. The tattoo Gavin had branded onto his neck was the least of it all, really. Gavin had lived and breathed a hundred-thousand inconsequential opinions about movies and food and people. Androids were scattered there too.

But someone _intelligent_ was at the head of the probe.

They weren’t looking at Gavin’s history—not really. They were looking at the connections, chasing the web of people who had disappeared from Gavin’s life after his ‘arrest’. They were mostly bots—carefully constructed fakes that required only a little bit of AI to maintain the simulacra of a real, physical life. Just patterns, really. Lucas boosted the complexity of their current interactions, sacrificing a small amount of his own processing power as he returned to the door, walking toe-to-heel to suppress his footsteps, and pressed himself back to the wall.

The door to the bedroom opened slowly, folding over the agent.

The intruder was human. He could hear them breathing softly, but they moved almost as silently as Lucas, their footsteps masked in the carpeting and their soft, dark clothing dampening the ambient sounds of the apartment—the hum of the refrigerator and the city outside.

He couldn’t see much of them without breaking his cover. He kept very still.

He felt surrounded, hounded, pinned down physically and mentally.

This wasn’t what he’d expected. This was supposed to be a gang. Simple. Unsophisticated and unsocialized. They weren’t supposed to hack or have experience with tracking digital footprints. Gavin’s censored history was never meant to take this kind of strain.

They were suspicious. They were well-trained and well-funded.

He stared at the back of the door. The probability that Detective Reed was alive and keeping his cover intact was dropping substantially. Quickly, gracefully, he slipped around the edge of the door. The intruder was only a foot away, picking up one of the beer bottles beside Gavin’s bed.

Lucas stepped backwards, Gavin’s gun and holster still gripped in his hand.

The intruder was taking their time, confident that they were alone and that they wouldn’t be interrupted. They stooped to the ground, checking under the bed, sweeping their hands efficiently between the mattress and the bedframe. They started to turn and Lucas stepped back against the wall of the hallway, barely out of sight.

The apartment was far too small.

The bathroom was in front of him, but there was no cover from the door, he could easily be spotted in crossing. The kitchen was behind him to his right, but its wall opened out to a countertop and the bedroom beyond. There was a _very_ small radius of cover.

He could take a human in a fight. Kill them easily and it would be a clear case of self-defense.

But it would mean blowing the case, making this group suspicious. If Gavin was _somehow_ keeping his cover, then Lucas needed to stay out of the way.

He listened intently, tracking the intruder by the slightest sound of their shoes on the concrete. They moved across the bedroom, heading for the counter and kitchen. Lucas moved lightly on his feet, paralleling their orbit around the apartment.

#

The mural wasn’t just random. Gavin stared at the artwork flattened onto the side of trucks and printed on the labels for ‘Old Nick’s Brewery in Hell, Michigan.”

“This is our main business. Old Nick’s brew,” Ward said proudly, leaning against the doorway. It had been a short walk from the city hall, just down the road and still on the main street. “Run by Ex-convicts. The story gets us decent press, and we help good people find their place in the world. Prison doesn’t reform shit, that’s what we do here—we give people back their lives and we get a neat check for doing it.”

Gavin looked around at the gleaming stills. There were more people than he’d expected, all engaged in some job or another, rolling barrels around and checking equipment, even someone hosing down the floor in the corner. A good deal of them had prison muscle and tattoos to match. More than a few red triangles flashed around the room, printed on T-shirts as well as skin.

Through the high windows at the back of the plant he could see out onto a wooden deck. The ornamental railing broke for a series of steps that turned into a hillside and quickly disappeared into a heavily wooded forest and lake beyond. It looked tranquil. Beautiful. The kind of place where he could imagine locals gathering for community events. There was even a stage set up against the brewery, presumably for live music.

But not exactly the criminal hideout he’d been hoping to find.

“How many people you got on the payroll?” he asked.

Ward shrugged. “We get bigger every year. Once parole gets cleared they move south, we have a few sister plants further South, but not many leave us, and why should they, when we got benefits, job security, a career path? I’m in the business of freedom, Mr. Reed. Plain and simple. The people that work for me, they’ve got purpose. Strength of character. They’ve taken back their power.”

“So you… own the brewery? Or do you work for the city?” Gavin hazarded. “I’m sorry. I don’t really… understand what this is yet.”

“We’ll get to that,” Ward assured him calmly. “But we have a lot to discuss. We should talk in the office.”

His frustration mounting, Gavin pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows. None of this was illegal. None of it was incriminating by itself. He quelled the urge to argue and followed Ward as the older man led him down the center of the plant towards the central wall.

The brewery’s office reminded him of Fowler’s. The wall overlooking the plant was lined with tall windows and, for now, blinds hid the contents. There was a short metal staircase and a thin porch set along it, like a catwalk from which an overseer might look out on the plant and its workers.

He followed Ward, taking in as much detail as possible. The construction was odd. Not that he was any expert on breweries, but an office like this felt more like the central vault of a fortress than a managerial post.

He waited behind until Ward unlocked the door, and followed his guide into a museum.

A very… specific kind of museum.

It _was_ an office of sorts. It had a desk, and a terminal, filing cabinets and chairs for visitors. Even a printer.

Behind the desk, however, an enormous glass frame protected a large flag emblazoned with the triangular blood-drop. O.R.I.O.N. had been printed across the anti-droid symbol of hate in enormous black block letters. It took up almost the entire wall. Around the office were other anti-droid symbols, posters with red LEDs diagonally slashed, and framed memos of android recalls in the final chaotic days of the uprising.

Gavin could almost hear the echo of sirens.

The scent of gasoline and the swaying vision of blank android faces.

“You’re on parole? Got your parole officer?” Ward asked, sitting behind the desk as if this was all normal. Like there was nothing to say about… any of this.

Gavin sat slowly, pulling his gaze away from the blood-drop triangle pointing down to the crown of Ward’s head.

“Yeah,” he said. “I served three years, but I got six left with a plastic babysitter looking over my shoulder.”

Ward nodded. “We know how that works. No employee of Old Nick’s has spent a day over three years in probation,” he said. “You got family? Kids?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

It wasn’t the question Gavin had been expecting. If it wasn’t for the violent anti-droid paraphernalia everywhere he settled his eyes, this would feel like the kind of interview he would give a subject of investigation. He was off balance. On the wrong side of this dynamic. He was supposed to be invisible, a low-level grunt with enough history to give him an interview, not an interrogation.

“Being a cop in the city didn’t really… make a lot of time for that sort of thing.”

That was true enough. Maybe too true. He was a better liar than this, but before he could elaborate or distance himself from the truth, Ward was nodding, moving on. “You’re not going to miss a meeting with your officer. You’re not going to take any drugs. Do your parole conditions allow for drinking?”

Gavin hesitated, and Ward nodded sharply. “I’ll take that to be a no, so you aren’t going to drink. Not until you’re cleared by our dear Uncle Sam. You aren’t going to give the bastards any excuse to put you back behind bars, understand? You need help with legal issues, taxes, alimony, child support, we’ll give it to you. We are very aware of the line here, and being a cop, you know where it is better than most.”

“Ex-cop,” Gavin corrected him.

Ward ignored the interruption. “No drugs and no crime. I don’t care how small it seems at the time. Shoplifting to jaywalking, play it _very_ goddamn safe, understand?”

He stared at Gavin until the detective nodded.

“There are three types of people in this world, Gavin,” he said, leaning back in his chair, clasping his hands over his chest as he considered the Detective. “Only three.”

He released his grip and held up one finger. “There are those that are content with the status quo—the workers. The cogs in this great… machine.”

He pulled his hands apart, gesturing to the air around them. The world at large. “They have no ambition, no drive, and they exist to maintain the machine. I _like_ cogs, Gavin. They’re useful when they’re well-oiled. They fit. They’re sure of their position, and of everyone else’s. They are the happiest, I think, of all of us.”

He leaned forward, brought his left hand to bear between them and held up two fingers. “Then there are the pistons. The motors. The levers and springs. The consumers of power and movement that keep it all running. They expend _effort_ to feel fulfilled. They are _ambitious_.”

“Ambition,” he said, closing his fist and stiffening it into a solid _jerk_ , “Is _good…_ when it has an outlet. But if the goal is unattainable, ambition can lead to frustration, depression, all symptoms of psychological angst.”

Gavin’s pulse was already picking up and he wondered if Ward could see the sweat gathering on his temples and soaking into his shirt.

The other man flicked out three fingers. “And the third… well the third is the driver. The operator. The one who sets it all in motion, cursed with an insatiable need for forward motion. They are the monarchs who take on the burdens for a collective. The supermen who justify the existence of the human race and who can make the decisions _necessary_ for the good of all.”

He stared at Gavin, gently and slowly laying his palms flat on the desk in front of him. “You excite me, Gavin, and you concern me. A droid-killing cop? A man who has played both master and slave to this system? I don’t know where you sit on the board. I don’t know if even _you_ know where your place is in all of this.”

“All of… what?” Gavin asked, it came out lighter than he had intended. His throat was dry. He was rigid in his seat—this was… way more craziness than he had bargained for on first contact.

For a long moment Ward’s gaze fixed on Gavin, expressionless as an android. The stillness changed his demeanor. He loomed, suddenly, in his chair. Far more powerful and strange than he’d been before.

And then he smiled, and he was jovial again. Like the frozen moment had never happened. He pushed his chair back and opened a drawer in his desk, retrieving a small black book.

“Here,” he tossed it to Gavin. The paper was thin and flexible. The Detective turned it over in his hands. The title was printed in rather small white letters, centered on the outside of the book in a thin, austere font: _Industrial Society and Its Future._

“Read that.”

“You’re giving me homework?” Gavin asked, flipping through the pages. The font was small and the words packed tightly together, organized by numbers and large headings. The section breaks were on every few pages with titles like: ‘ _Oversocialisation’, ‘Disruption of the Power Process’,_ and _‘Revolution is Easier than Reform’._ Gavin frowned, his eyes catching on ‘ _The Motives of Scientists’_.

What the hell _was_ this? How many times had he asked that question today and yet he _still_ didn’t know.

“Cover to cover, twice,” Ward commanded, drawing Gavin’s gaze back up. He held out a hand, “And you can consider yourself hired. Sonny will liaison with your parole officer if you give him the details, and I would recommend that you move down here as soon as possible.”

“Move? Here?”

Ward grinned. “Of course. Every employee has access to a small house and plot of land behind the brewery. It’s a commune, of a sort, except we all pay our taxes and visit the shooting range on a Friday. Hell is an old-fashioned type of a town, Mr. Reed. We’re a community. Everybody knows everybody and we all… get along.”

#

Reed waited to get back to the car to open the book. His destination set into the autopilot, he settled back to read.

_1.) The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race._

He read slowly and steadily, because he felt himself fighting every sentence. Rooted as the language was in off-handed bigotry and pseudo-psychology, there were segments that appealed to him. Things he’d felt his whole life and never thought to put into words.

It wasn’t just motion sickness from reading in the car that was making him feel nauseous. He could smell burning thirium and melting plastic as he read the words. The chaos of Detroit that night on the streets was direly prophesized in the tiny booklet.

_\--science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research—_

Wasn’t that Cyberlife in a nutshell? The essence of their evil encapsulated in clean sentences.

More than that, the _confidence_ of the writing was somehow attractive, pulling him to the next sentence before he could properly understand the first. Hypnotic in a way, as mesmerizing as the sway of a snake.

The car bleeped a complaint at him, reminding him that they’d been stopped outside his destination for almost twenty minutes now. He shut the book and closed his eyes to try and force away his nausea. He breathed deeply, a mistake as the stench of the city invaded his nose and lungs.

The cover apartment was in the outskirts of the city, where construction had yet to reach—one of the mega-block government subsidized apartment buildings with poorly maintained elevators and a ground floor that smelled like human waste.

His real apartment was near the precinct, in a glass high-rise with a balcony that stretched the length of the living room and master bedroom. Most of his paycheck went towards rent, but his other vices were cheap. His apartment was spacious and enviable. He _deserved_ that space.

If the FBI took him on, he’d get a bigger apartment uptown. Or move South. Nothing, really, was keeping him in Detroit. This tiny, filthy dump was just a passing indignity.

He sighed and pulled his phone out of his pocket, frowning at the fifty-eight missed calls on the screen just as the fifty-ninth started buzzing into the phone. He got out of the car, sending it to park in the lot around the corner.

“Lucas,” he sighed. “I’ll meet you at the apartment.”

He didn’t wait to hear the android’s answer and swiped the call out of his phone. He kept reading in the elevator, a section which he’d dog-eared in the car.

\-- _The concept of “mental health” in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress._

He blinked, reading the words over and over again. Did they make sense? Yes. No. Yes. Maybe?

Was this what was binding the anti-droid assaults together? Ex-convicts with a sense of disenfranchisement and a book telling them why they were right?

He fumbled with his keys, but the door opened ahead of him.

Lucas stood in the doorway. “Great,” Gavin sighed, “You’re here.”

He was going to just push past the android into the tiny, dingy apartment, but he paused to take in the six-foot two-inch federal agent’s black power skirt and the red stockings disappearing into sensible leather lace-up shoes. A blue shirt and white jacket over the ensemble was the final touch of… whatever this was.

“ _What_ are you wearing?” Gavin asked.

The android looked down at itself, and wrinkled his eyebrows in confusion. “Business casual?” it offered.

Gavin rolled his eyes and gave up, entering the tiny apartment that was their base of operations.

“Detective Reed,” the RK900 said gravely, setting its hands on its hips and planting its feet onto the carpet. In the skirt, its posture held even more command than his tone. “We need to talk.”

Gavin shoved past it, bouncing himself against the hallway and into the kitchen. “Yeah, no fucking kidding. This is some Hot Fuzz, Children of the Corn type shit, Lucas. The whole goddamn _town_ might be in on it. Whatever the fuck ‘ _it’_ is.”

“Their networker may even be wider than that. You had a visitor,” Lucas informed him, watching from the doorway.

Opening the fridge, Gavin frowned at the contents—a single bottle of ketchup and three mismatched beers from the corner store. “A visitor,” he said blankly.

“Someone came looking for evidence that you were, or weren’t, who you said you were. They were… very thorough in their search.”

Gavin turned and looked around the kitchen, feeling his ribs start to squeeze his lungs. “They see you?” he asked. “They find anything?”

“No.”

“This is bigger than we thought, right?”

“Yes.”

Frowning, Gavin knocked the cap off his bottle with the edge of the counter. “Fuck,” he said. “What are you gonna do?”

“I thought you might be dead,” Lucas said, its voice still eerily calm. “I cannot formulate a contingency plan until you answer your phone.”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “Not dead, just reading. Here,” he tossed the book, one handed, at the RK900, who caught it precisely in midair. “What do you make of that?”

Lucas frowned, turning the cover over in its hands and flicking through the pages rapidly. “It’s troubling,” it said. “Where did you get it?”

“From some guy called Ward. Probably not his real name. He’s either the mayor of Hell or just some goddamn guy that works at a brewery. He wouldn’t tell me shit, but he gave me that, wants me to give a book report when I get back. And some guy named Sonny is going to be in touch with my ‘parole officer’ to get me a job down there. And a house. They’re gonna give me a _house_.”

“Do you know what this is?” Lucas asked slowly, closing the book and pressing the pages together.

“Well I read the cover, if that’s what you—”

“This is Theodore Kaczynski’s manifesto.”

Gavin leaned against the counter, scratching at his scalp with the hand not currently occupied by a beer. “Am I supposed to know who that is?” he asked wearily.

“The Unabomber, an anarchist and terrorist arrested in 1996, a year after writing that… book. He died in prison over a decade ago, a few years before the first Chloe was ever built.”

The moniker at least was familiar. Gavin blinked at the book in Lucas’s hands. “He killed people? Over this?”

_Panic in the streets. A city on fire and empty, soulless eyes._

“Three people,” Lucas said flatly. “And injured two dozen more. Have you read it yet?”

“Some,” Gavin said. He felt slightly sick. Other than the obvious sexist, racist, ableist bullshit, he’d found the words almost… comforting. Humans needed purpose, and technology had robbed it from them—Written in 1995 it was prophetic. Social media, cancel-culture, the chaos of the mid-2010s, and androids themselves—the mentions were vague and couched in voodoo warnings of destruction and scifi dystopias, but _there_ none-the-less.

He met Lucas’s eyes and took another deep gulp of beer. Lowering the bottle to rest against his chest, he hung his shoulders and considered the federal agent. “Okay,” he said. “So what are we going to do? If I’m going to be living down there, we can’t debrief every day. What’s our play?”

Lucas stepped forward and took the beer from Gavin, setting it firmly in the sink. “Tell me everything,” it said.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really appreciate the comments. Thank you so much for the support :D


	5. System Withdrawal

Somehow, after one week living at Orion and working at the brewery, he was getting less sleep but somehow his nightmares were getting longer. He dreamed that Detroit burned in the snow, and cold, bright, intelligent eyes watched him stand over the mass graves. Snow and ash mixed in the air, in his lungs.

Ward stood at his side, a hand on his shoulder.

_“Helter Skelter, Reed. It’s been and gone.”_

Lucas stood in the dumpster, but Gavin couldn’t say how he knew it was the RK900 agent. Its skinthetic was gone but its plating was red and gold, glistening in the firelight like exposed muscle.

 _“You have no choice anymore,”_ the RK900 said. _“Obey._ ”

There were matches in his hands and every breath tasted of gasoline.

He always woke retching and shaking as the world spun and spun around him.

#

Week One:

Lucas smoothed his lanyard over his chest, feeling some measure of comfort from the smooth surface and thin edges. The week had been long, longer than he’d ever have imagined it would be. Up until this assignment, his job had consisted solely of waiting and remotely filing paperwork, but now the passiveness grated on him. He wanted to be _on_ the field, in it, not impotently waiting on the sidelines for a human with an attitude problem to come to him.

But today was the day. He was really, truly undercover for the first time.

…as a parole officer, but at least it was _something_.

Not that it required much change. Just the lanyard around his neck and the same suit Perkins used to make him wear at the office. White and black clothing, which Lucas at an atomic level felt was anonymous. Obedient. Servile.

“They’re a good bunch,” David said earnestly from the doorway. He was an older human, a social worker first and HR worker second, and there was something hopelessly _young_ about the way he spoke. Not stupid, per-say but… naïve. It was one of the reasons Lucas had decided to make him the point of contact for his operation.

No one else in the building knew that Lucas wasn’t in fact a new parole officer and not even David knew _why_ he was here, or that Gavin was an operative. The fewer people that knew about that, the better.

Lucas delicately organized his desk, turning everything a little bit at a time. His nervousness turned him obsessive about right angles and clear working spaces—a carry-over from his calibration processes—mapping his environment and his control over it.

“They come in for their appointments like clockwork. I think it’s a step in the right direction, having them looking out for each other. Before the Jericho demonstrations, Old Nick’s had a no-android policy to keep humans in work and really the numbers of re-offenders has dropped dramatically since it opened its doors to ex-cons.”

Lucas nodded. “And you don’t find it… odd, that they all live down there?”

“We do home checks often, and it’s… nice. A little spartan, but you know I think that’s good too—after prison and cells and such, to get back to basics. It’s reintegration at a slower pace, but sometimes all these guys need is a little time and no… distractions. Old Nick’s is a zero-tolerance workplace for theft and drug use, really I don’t think your investigation will turn up anything… untoward.”

“How soon can I make a home check?” Lucas asked.

David grimaced. “Well I wouldn’t recommend it for at least a month—let them get settled in before you start knocking down their doors looking for drugs or whatnot.”

A ping on the system alerted Lucas to the arrival of Gavin and the Orion members signing into the system downstairs. He watched through the security cameras as they shuffled through the security without pause, barely pausing to check their belts and keys into the bins at the edge of the room.

Gavin was at the back of the group, moving slower than the rest. Maybe even limping a little bit.

“They’re here,” he said.

#

Without the grainy low-res security footage obscuring his view, Gavin looked… bad. Very bad. His eyes were sunken and dark, his cheeks were hollow, and he was slumped into the squeaky waiting-room chair like at any moment he could go to sleep. In comparison, his companions looked sprightly, waiting attentively, chatting among themselves while very clearly excluding Gavin from the group.

“Gavin? Gavin Reed?” Lucas asked the assembly with careless authority. Gavin twitched his hand and shuffled to his feet.

Cracked ribs, Lucas noted quickly, and a knee so swollen that his human agent was having trouble putting any weight on it. The android kept the smile on his face as he led Gavin down the hall to the new office.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” the human mumbled at his back. “You’re wearing an actual _suit_.”

Only once he had closed the door behind him did Lucas turn and raise a hand to Gavin’s neck, feeling the heat radiating from his skin.

“Get your hands off me,” Gavin growled irritably, pushing Lucas away and turning sideways to slip from between the android and the door at his back.

“You have a fever.”

“I’m fine. Everyone gets sick when they first get to the camp. They call it ‘System Withdrawal’.” He put dramatic quotes around the words, rolling his eyes. Lucas felt a little relief at that, at least the human’s sardonic cynicism hadn’t suffered as much as his body clearly had.

“It’s actually an upper respiratory infection,” Lucas informed him.

“Well _actually_ it’s a _cold_ ,” Gavin hissed. “I’ve had a _cold_ before, you fucking dickhead.”

Lucas blinked. “Maybe, but this is a very… bad cold. I can tell that you aren’t breathing as deeply as usual. Your lungs are filling with fluid.”

“You know this is exactly what happens when I look up my symptoms online? A cough? A headache? Oh, turns out I’ve got got two days to live or some shit. Can you please calm down?”

“And your cracked ribs?” Lucas asked stiffly. “Is that part of ‘System Withdrawal’ too?”

“Maybe,” Gavin said flippantly. “Look, are we here to talk about my health?”

Lucas blinked. For a moment, despite all his waiting, he’d actually… forgotten about why they were here. Orion, the mysterious Ward, the week of pacing and hypothesizing—how could he have forgotten?

“You’re right,” he said, shame flooding through him. “I’m sorry.”

He walked around Gavin to the desk and sat as Gavin did, straightening the tablet on his desk as he waited until the human had arranged himself comfortably. “What have you found out?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

Whatever he’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that. “What do you mean?” he said slowly.

Gavin shrugged, then winced at the pain it caused. “I have _nothing_. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing _there,_ and I sure as hell don’t know I’m doing _here_.”

Lucas pretended not to notice the tremble in Gavin’s hands. Part of his illness or a symptom of a lie? His polygraph hadn’t blipped a warning, but it’d been wrong before. “Start at the beginning,” he said.

#

When Gavin showed up for his first day with a black duffel bag full of clothes strung across his shoulder, it wasn’t Ward who greeted him inside the city hall. Instead he found a tall, thin woman in a black tank top and combat boots laced up to her knees. “Reed?” she asked.

He nodded. “You can call me Gavin,” he said, offering his hand.

She ignored it and walked straight past him. “Casey. Come on.”

Gavin stood his ground, looking up to the second floor, where Ward had first appeared. “What about Ward?”

She paused at the door, a flicker of impatience in her posture. “Ward’s been called away to business, so I’m gonna get you settled in. Is that all you’ve brought?”

Gavin shrugged uncomfortably. “I haven’t got much to begin with.”

“Good,” she said. “You’ll fit right in.”

#

“Casey Shallon?” Lucas asked suddenly, breaking through Gavin’s narrative.

Gavin paused, his thoughts rewiring back to the present day. “I don’t know,” he said. “Everyone calls her Casey.”

Frowning, the android touched the tablet on the desk, bringing up a mugshot and turning it for Gavin to see.

“Yeah, I… think that’s her?” Gavin said slowly. “Yeah… that’s… Jesus. She’s changed.”

In the photograph, Casey’s hair was long and tangled. Her eyes were red and swollen with tears. She had actual _emotion_ on her face, and clearly since the photograph had been taken, she’d lost weight and put on muscle.

“She served three years for child neglect,” Lucas said. “Her children live in Arizona with their grandparents now.”

Gavin grimaced and looked away. “Yeah, she’s not really the mothering type.”

He rubbed absent-mindedly at his jaw, taking in this information. She’d been abrupt and offhand, but she’d been one of the better ones.

“So what happened next?” Lucas prompted.

#

They walked through the brewery. There were more people than the last time he’d been inside the plant, but they paid no attention to Gavin or Casey, moving around them fluidly.

“There’s no cell service,” Casey said, walking briskly out onto the deck and down the stairs, directly into the trees. Gavin followed behind her, forced to pick up his pace or be left behind. “No internet. You can use your phone in town or in the brewery itself, but you’ll get nothing but empty bars inside the forest. Ward wants it that way, and his land, his rules.”

Gavin didn’t answer that, distracted by their new surroundings.

It felt like a campsite—a main road sided with heavy stones, that branched off into small clearings, gardens with a small fire and seating area circled by four or five cabins each. All the houses were identical, or nearly so, small with sturdy white-washed brick walls, raised from the ground on squat decks.

The largest of these didn’t have a deck and had a squarer, more industrial feel. “Communal bathrooms and showers,” Casey said, pointing to one. “Be as quick as you can. Don’t waste the water.”

Decks had been built around the trees as well and leaflitter had been raked around the base of the trunks to keep them warm and nourished. Gavin trotted after Casey, taking in the… strangeness of it all. It felt old. Old and new at the same time. Rustic, maybe, was the word.

They passed two or three of these blocks before Casey turned off the main trail onto a branching path, taking Gavin to one of the small cabins.

“Number sixteen, this one’s yours,” she said, scraping a key from the top of the door. “You can lock it up if you like but Ward has another key—they’re his after all. Only fair. No one else will come in, and if you’re found invading someone else’s privacy, you will regret it. Take care of your unit. Keep it clean. If you don’t value what Ward gives you, he’s in his rights to take it away.”

The cabin was hardly luxurious—Just a bed, chair, and desk. It was smaller than his cover apartment, but there were no holes in the walls, dirty windows, or badly patched holes. It didn’t smell of city sewage and pollution and he shared no walls with neighbors.

It also came with a cat.

“Trouble,” Casey said.

“What?” Gavin asked, blinking at the large, sleek tabby currently licking its stomach in the window.

“His name. Trouble—he goes where he likes. Kick him or step on his tail—anything—and we’ll fuckin’ skin you. Slowly. We’ll watch you bleed out on the street.”

The words and tone were so deadpan, Gavin wasn’t sure if he’d heard her correctly. She met his gaze with heavy-lidded eyes. “None of us are scared of prison. Not anymore,” she said. “Rule number one: Don’t mess with Trouble.”

Trouble tilted his head up, blinking his wide yellow eyes. He let out a plaintiff noise. It was deep and ragged, like the moan of a heavy smoker. “Thank you, Trouble,” Casey said without missing a beat. And then to Gavin: “Thank him.”

Gavin looked from her to the cat and back. “Thanks? Trouble?”

The cat stared at them for a second, still leaned against the window with his legs akimbo. He blinked slowly, as if in benediction, and then gracefully went back to cleaning his already immaculate fur.

“You can figure out the rest,” she said. “The bell will ring for lunch. Wait for me to come get you. Ward’s asked me to make sure you don’t get killed until he gets back, but plenty here know how to make it look like an accident.”

Gavin blinked “What?”

She shrugged. “Lock your door,” she suggested.

And then she was gone.

#

“Not much else happened on the first day,” Gavin said. “It was quiet, they put me to work unloading the crates out of the trucks. Ward wasn’t there and I got the impression I wasn’t supposed to ask about that.”

“They threatened to kill you?” Lucas asked.

Gavin shrugged uncomfortably and tried not to wince as bolts of pain shot through his body. “It doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t even have mentioned it.”

Lucas stared at him, silent.

Gavin sighed. “We knew, going in, this group wouldn’t like cops,” he said.

#

They put him to work moving kegs of Old Nick’s Brew from the back of the rigs and setting them onto pallets for the forklifts to move. The work was boring, it was mostly silent, and he was not left unsupervised. This, he found out later, was mainly for his protection.

It didn’t matter that Ward had given him the all-clear. It didn’t matter that Gavin Reed had spent three years in jail. It didn’t matter that he worked just as hard as the rest of them.

They didn’t trust him. Some hated him.

Conversations were careful, people moved away, and no one said a word _to_ him beyond orders to _do this_ or _move that_. He tried to think of it as still establishing his cover. Even if it _felt_ like the case was stagnating because he couldn’t keep up the pace of the work.

Only when he got sick did things actually begin to change. He worked through fever and chills, eyes watering and coughing as discreetly as he could. He’d been planning on picking up his keys and heading into town for some over-the-counter, but when he returned to his cabin, it was to find a large crockery pot filled with a heavy meat stew and a note that said.

_Power through—Ward_

He turned the note over, but there was nothing else. He looked around, only to find Casey slumped in the center of their shared block, smoking a cigarette.

“Is Ward here?” he called to her, holding up the note.

“Nah,” she said. “Sonny makes the stew and we recycle the note. I don’t even know who got it first. Before my time.”

He looked down at the words. “What does it mean?” he asked.

She dragged on her cigarette for so long he wondered if she was going to answer him at all. When she spoke, the words were tight with the effort of keeping the smoke in her lungs. “Means you shouldn’t be taking those keys anywhere. Means you should stay put and let nature take its course.”

She exhaled slowly, letting a billowing cloud into the air. To his feverish mind it looked like a tidal wave, crashing out around her, curling and cresting over her head in delicate eddies.

He left the stew on his doorstep to join her in the circle, collapsing his aching body into a chair. “Really? I can’t go get some cough syrup?”

“You can,” she said. “If that’s what you wanna do.”

He smoothed the note against his thigh. It was creased and wrinkled and stained. He could _sense_ the age and use emanating from it. A living piece of community history. “And everyone gets sick?” he asked, the words rasping form his throat.

Casey knocked the ash from her cigarette. “It’s like a… detox. The System Withdrawal. Happens when you take to living off the grid like this, so we’ve all been through it. This is natural, unfiltered air, the food is all GMO and antibiotic free. Your body’s just getting used to fighting everything it was _made_ to fight in the first place.”

 _Or it’s because there’s no heating in the cabins, the food is rationed, and the hours are ridiculous._ But with the note pressed to his leg and the stew waiting on the steps, he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Also, he’d started coughing. It turned wet and ragged and it felt like he had gravel rattling around in his lungs. Casey said nothing, just stared off into the distance, smoking calmly. “Where’s Ward?” he asked at last, when he’d gotten his breathing under control.

“You’ve sure got a hard-on for Ward,” Casey said flatly. “Tired of my company already?”

“Never.”

At that, she smirked. “Stick around,” she said, her eyes finally fixing on him for the first time. “He turns up to the campfires at night sometimes. Likes to see us all getting along.”

#

Gavin paused to cough. It wracked through him. It didn’t feel like it was getting any better. He didn’t hear Lucas move, but suddenly there was a glass of water and a handkerchief the android had gotten from god knows where. Gavin took it and covered his mouth until his shuddering breath was contained again.

When he could breathe again he slumped back in his chair. “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” he whispered.

“That is a relief,” Lucas said. “Because it sounds quite bad.”

“Shut up.”

“So did he turn up at the campfire?”

#

The fires were lit every night, and people gathered around them to talk and laugh and drink. Gavin had heard them outside his cabin, but he’d always been too exhausted or too on-edge to come out at night. It felt dangerous to be in the dark with so many strangers.

But now, his stomach full and with the fire soaking into his clothes and skin, it felt dangerous in a completely different way. They were starting not to be strangers. He worked with them, and not… hiding anything from them either. He could hardly gather intel on a bunch of people doing their jobs and working hard.

Anti-droid jokes and comments were not illegal, after all.

“Anyone hear about the android in the president’s cabinet?” A tall man in a bright-but faded Hawaiian shirt said in a strong South African accent, balancing a beer on his knee. “That Jericho bitch?”

Gavin blinked. “North?” he said, genuinely surprised. “No fuckin’ way.”

The man huffed a bitter laugh, shaking his head. “No, Not North. Josh or whatever.”

“Russia’s got it right,” someone else broke in as the conversations around the fire coalesced, people going silent to focus to this one. “Those soviet fuckers wipe ‘em every night, just to be sure and then media blackout all this deviant shit before it gives the snowflakes any ideas.”

Not illegal. Every word was a first amendment right.

“We were _this_ close to winning,” Casey chimed in, pressing her forefinger and thumb together to illustrate. “If I woulda been there, one of those SWAT, FBI, police pricks, I would taken my earpiece out and blown Jericho away. Easy.”

“It’s like the book says,” someone else muttered. “It’s ‘cause of the system—everyone’s hooked in to the fuckin’ chain of command. There’s no choice but to obey that little voice in their ear.”

A rumble of agreement chased the edge of the circle and Gavin hummed as well, lazy with warmth and sudden relief that _okay_ , yeah. Everyone had read that fuckin’ book. It was important, and he was on the right track.

Gavin drank deeply from his water. No one gave him any alcohol. Ward had apparently told everyone to keep him sober. Which was fine, technically it would be drinking on the job which, even undercover, he was supposed to avoid as much as possible, and it was a reminder that he _was_ on a job.

The conversation was just starting to get heated when Trouble came trotting to the edge of their circle from the forest. He didn’t appear to belong to anyone, during the day he tended to follow the sun from one cabin to the next, waiting for doors to be opened ahead of him—nowhere was off limits to the cat. Not Ward’s office or the trucks the kegs of beer were loaded into.

He yowled one long, slow noise, like a coyote being strangled, prompting a chorus of “Thank you, Trouble,” from the assembly and then a burble of laughter.

Trouble licked his chops and settled onto his paws, meatloafing beside Gavin as if he were just another one of the people here after a long, hard day’s work. The tiny brown-grey-black tiger had adopted Reed, and often chose his cabin to spend his day in. Casey said it was because he was running a fever from the Withdrawal, but at night Trouble seemed to be the only source of warmth in his cabin.

For a moment everything seemed to be in some sort of harmony.

And then.

“Only thing worse than the ‘bots are the cops,” a harsh, deep voice said. Gavin _felt_ the words directed at him, they were aimed across the fire from a man who up until now had been silent. Gavin hadn’t seen him around the brewery. He’d assumed he’d just drifted to the smell of stew and woodsmoke from another block.

Every other voice died away, leaving an awkward bubble at the very center of the gathering. Everyone looked at Gavin, waiting for his reaction.

He said nothing, just took another sip of water, blinking slowly at the man who had challenged him. Tall and dark-haired, younger than the rest of them. He wore a dark jacket and combat boots. The back of Gavin’s neck prickled.

“How many cops does it take to change a lightbulb?” the stranger asked.

The crackling fire and croaking, creaking, singing forest filled the space between them. “Easy Shane,” Casey said softly.

“How many?” Gavin asked.

“Trick question,” Shane said. “Cops don’t change shit, they just beat the bulb for being broke. How do you stop a cop from drowning?”

Gavin said nothing. Shane grinned, his eyes glittering in the firelight.

“You take your foot off the back of his neck.”

That got a few sniggers from around the campfire. Gavin’s skin crawled. “Good one,” he said flatly.

Shane raised his chin proudly. “You think you’re better than us?” he asked. “Better than Ward? You have no goddamn idea what we are. What we could do to you.”

“Well, this has been fun,” Gavin said, standing. “But I’m gonna—"

“I’ll kill you, Reed,” Shane promised, watching him, unmoving, from the other side of the fire.

“I told you,” Casey warned him. “No one’s gonna clean up after you, Shane.”

The light painted demonic hollows into the young man’s cheeks, masking his eyes and glinting from his teeth as he spoke. “You don’t have to worry. I’m not gonna make a mess.”

#

Back in the office, silence followed the words. Lucas’s eyes fixed on Gavin’s. The human fidgeted with the edge of his frayed jacket. Anxious. “Just like that? No one stopped him? No one… said anything?”

“There are no rules out there, Lucas,” Gavin said softly. “I think if he did murder me, they’d probably hand my body over to the police and let you arrest him, but they wouldn’t try to stop him or help you convict him. Things are… different there. It’s hard to explain. But our cover story is still safe.”

“And what happened to your ribs?”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “I can take a few bangs and bruises, Lucas.”

“Was it Shane?”

The human gave no affirmation or denial. He had to know it would be useless when Lucas could easily detect a lie. He simply raised an eyebrow.

“It was,” the android said.

“He drives a forklift in the plant,” Gavin said, looking away. “He didn’t see me between the pallets. It could have been an accident.”

Could have been. But clearly wasn’t.

“I don’t like this.” Lucas leaned back in his chair. “This was supposed to be about androids not cops.”

“Yeah, tell me about it, but I’ve been down there for a week, and nothing has happened. I have absolutely no proof that they’re linked to any hate crimes much less… whatever their network is doing, and I can guess Rasa and Anders still aren’t talking. I don’t even know _where_ Ward has been for the past week, much less what he’s been doing.” 

“Maybe we should go in hard. Talk to Ward with some uniforms and lawyers in the room. Try to rattle him and see what shakes loose.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to rattle Ward,” Gavin muttered. “I’ve only spoken with him once and he rattled _me_.”

“This is serious, Gavin. I think you’re in danger, and I don’t like that I can’t see where it’s coming from or where this is all going.”

Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Danger is _kind_ of the point of being undercover in a criminal organization, you know? This was never really recreational for me.”

Lucas clasped and unclasped his hands, feeling the power in his fingers. Power that was useless in this situation. “So you want to go back?”

“I’ll go back,” Gavin affirmed. “All you gotta do is buy me time with the bureau. We might be in this for the long haul.”

“I can do that, and…” he hesitated. This was a bad time, but there would probably be no good time. “Gavin. I…”

The human’s brows crinkled. “What?” he asked impatiently

“Maybe it’s a bad idea. I’m not a doctor, I don’t really even know why I thought… but—”

He opened his desk drawer and withdrew the small plastic bag he’d hidden there. “It’s… a mild sedative. Something to take if you… if you feel an attack coming on.”

Gavin’s gaze flickered from his face to the bag and back again. Lucas braced for hissed insults, biting words, an explosion of anger, but Gavin must have been even more ill than he’d diagnosed because the human reached forward and took it.

“I don’t know if it’ll do much,” Lucas said quickly, startled by the lack of resistance. “It might not do anything, I just thought you—”

“Thanks,” Gavin said finally. “It’s… I probably won’t even use it—sleeping light is… safer these days, but… thanks.”

Lucas couldn’t help but smile, just a slight twitch of his lips—he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be _useful_ , but there it was. He’d done _something_.

“Same time next week?” he suggested

Gavin actually let out a huff of a laugh, like an abrupt release of tension. “Yeah,” he said. “Same time next week.”

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one chapter today! It's a long one though, so I hope you enjoy!


	6. Glitter Freeze

Weeks passed, and when he still had nothing to report, they had to start getting creative. Gavin wasn’t exactly followed, but he was tracked. Casey knew his schedule, and she turned up every once in a while to make sure he was sticking to it.

But as the days wore on and both he and they continued to be unremarkable, they loosened the leash, especially once he’d gotten through the encroaching sickness without so much as a cough drop.

That first two and half weeks as he hacked and sniveled his way through the worst cold of his life, he’d been slapped a hundred times on the back by what seemed like everyone on the payroll for the brewery. Always the solidarity was accompanied by a grin and a bracing “ _Power through_.”

Like it was a goddamn Heil Hitler.

Whatever. It got him to the point that he could wander out into the woods, to the designated rendezvous where Lucas would be waiting with a car. Never was it more obvious that the android was his last connection to the outside world than in those few moments when Gavin climbed into the car and felt just a little less alone. A little more like himself.

The line separating his double life was thinning and that was dangerous. He felt as if the ground was slipping under his feet and there was nothing much he could do about it.

“How’s the station?” he asked.

“You sound much better,” the android said.

“Yeah, they gave me a blanket,” Gavin grumbled.

Blankets were for good workers who _powered through_. Never mind he probably wouldn’t have gotten sick if he’d had one to begin with. They were thick and heavy cotton, clearly hand-crocheted by someone. It was warm and firm, and Gavin was gonna do his damnedest to keep it at the end of all this.

He could never be gone from the camp for more than an hour, but the only time he felt safe anymore was with Lucas. With his feet kicked up on the dashboard, a cheeseburger in one hand and a cardboard cup of soda in the other, he could fucking… breathe.

Soon enough they were half-an-hour’s drive from Hell, parked a few feet from the drive-through they’d just visited, and for the first time in days, Gavin laughed as Lucas relayed the antics in the precinct. It was probably a tactic in one of his precious handbooks, to keep him grounded, to remind him why he was on a leash for the FBI.

But whatever. It worked.

Lucas grinned through these stories, his jaw working on the wad of gum he’d been chewing since Gavin had slipped into the car. It humanized him the way that an LED removal and a matching pink-and-orange sweatshirt-sweatpants hadn’t, and gave his uncannily perfect smile a crooked slant as he described Miller peeling a squad car around an over-full parking lot in a chase with the supplies for his wife’s party in the back of the car.

“Miller didn’t even think about it afterwards, he just got his tires checked by requisitions and headed straight to the park, about an hour late to the reveal party his wife set up. So he gets there and everyone’s been waiting, so they’re gathering around, and he opens the back and—”

He expanded his hands in front of his chest. “Glitter _everywhere_. Both balloons had burst in the middle of the chase.”

“Oh _god,”_ Gavin laughed, shaking his head, “Req probably gave him hell. They get mad if we get our own blood on the seats.”

 _“Oh,_ just _wait_ ,” Lucas said, his voice hitching with suppressed glee. “It gets better. Connor and Anderson missed the reveal; they were on a stakeout in the department van. So Tran and Wilson swept up all the glitter, vacuumed it out of the carpets, and got a funnel-- you know the funnels the techs use in the evidence locker? And they slid about three gallons of super-fine glitter into the vents in Anderson’s car and turned all the dials to the maximum settings.”

Gavin choked on a mouthful of soda, nearly spitting it all over the interior of Lucas’s car. Lucas was laughing as well, turned all the way to the side to watch Gavin react to the story. “I have _never_ seen Fowler laugh,” the android said. “But when Connor and the Lieutenant walked back into the station, not _two_ minutes after signing their perp to the Sergeant and taking a high-five from both Tran _and_ Wilson… He broke _down_.”

Waving a hand to try and stop Lucas, Gavin was helpless with laugher. He couldn’t imagine it. He’d worked at the precinct far longer than Lucas, and _he_ ’d never seen Fowler laugh.

But the RK900 held out a hand. “You don’t understand, Fowler was sitting out on the steps to his office. He couldn’t talk for ten minutes, and Hank was standing there the whole time trying to find out who’d done it.”

Gavin wiped his eyes and pressed a hand to his chest to try and stop the laughter from bubbling up again, “Shit,” he wheezed. “I wish I could have seen it.”

“I,” Lucas said wickedly, tapping his forehead “brought evidence,”

He held a finger to the tablet on Gavin’s lap, his skinthetic drawing back as he transferred data—pictures. They flicked onto the screen, expanding to fill the whole area, and Gavin was laughing before he’d seem more than the blur of pink in the center of the bullpen.

And when he could see the details… it was better than he could ever have imagined. Connor and Hank stood in the middle of the bullpen, looking _highly_ disgruntled. Pink glitter coated their chests and faces, Hank had a particularly thick layer over his face and while he’d clearly tried to wipe it away, he’d only spread and rubbed it in like paint. A smudged trail of glittering footsprints was almost visible in the picture behind them, spread out towards the door.

He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even think _._ It was the perfect moment, Anderson and his tin-can looking like offended cats, trying to take up some measure of pride while surrounded by the precinct’s officers laughing so hard they looked like they were in physical pain _._

“Easy,” Lucas said, grinning to show off his perfect, straight, white teeth. “Breathe. It’s not like you have the braincells to spare.”

But it took a while for Gavin to calm down, and even longer to stop huffing out laughter as he imagined Connor and Hank sitting in the front of their car, the Lieutenant starting it to an explosion of fine glitter. The smile stayed on Gavin’s face as he picked through the packet for a warm French fry.

“So Miller’s having a girl?” he asked at last, breaking the comfortable silence.

Lucas took the tablet back and looked down at the picture. “A gender reveal seems rather antiquated,” he said. “And maybe a bit premature.”

Gavin shrugged. “Yeah, maybe, but it’s an excuse to celebrate. People need to celebrate sometimes, especially when their lives are about to become a non-stop parade of diapers and sick and stress about toys and food and… all that fuckin’ _mess_.”

“I take it you don’t want children?”

He considered the question for the briefest moment. He hadn’t thought about it in a long time, and he was unsurprised to find the answer was still the same. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t wanna hand down any of my shit.”

“Adoption is a—”

“I can pass on plenty of baggage without getting DNA involved, trust me,” Gavin interrupted quickly. He shook his head and flicked a dismissive hand to move the conversation along. “What about you? Got a spreadsheet ready for ‘operation family’?”

To his surprise, Lucas looked out of the windshield, a strangely… blank expression on his face. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think so? I think once I have settled down… somewhere. I might find myself lonely, if I don’t share my life with someone.”

“Loneliness is a myth,” Gavin informed him. “Perpetuated by our feelings of inferiority.”

A quote from the manifesto. He’d meant it as a joke, but it didn’t feel funny. He wasn’t sure why he had said it, only that he was suddenly wildly uncomfortable and wanted the conversation to move on as fast as possible.

Lucas didn’t take the hint.

“So you’re not lonely? Not even out there, with them?”

“Hell’s not exactly a lonely place,” Gavin muttered, crumpling up his food wrappings. He didn’t want to talk about how he felt—that was always dangerous, and with Lucas it would inevitably lead to some kind of discussion about his mental health.

And he was _fine_.

“We need to make progress,” Lucas said finally, when Gavin refused to elaborate. “Soon. I need evidence of _some_ wrongdoing or we’re wasting our time.”

“I don’t know if we should be doing this,” Gavin said at last. “It doesn’t feel right, hanging ‘round a bunch of ex-cons just because they’re ex-cons. They’ve served their time and as far as I can see, they’re all working hard for a living.”

Lucas didn’t answer and Gavin shrugged, embarrassed for some reason. “I’m just saying,” he said. “It’s not cops and robbers.”

“But this isn’t normal. There _is_ evidence of systemic criminal behavior. The assaults in Detroit, the anti-droid paraphernalia in Ward’s office. You were only able to infiltrate the group by going to prison and proving your hatred of androids. That _is_ worth investigating.”

“I know,” Gavin sighed. He crumpled the paper bag in his lap. “I know. But they’re giving me nothing. I barely have time to snoop around and when I do, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be looking for. There’s plenty of evidence that Orion hates androids, but none that Ward ordered the android assaults at the harbor.”

“Then we need to find some control here. We need to shake them up, get them to make a move. We need them to show their cards.”

“What do you have in mind?” Gavin asked.

Lucas chewed thoughtfully, looking out of the dark windshield. “I think it’s time I did a home check on my parolees,” he said. “How about tomorrow?”

Gavin stretched his neck, thinking about the day tomorrow. Likely it would be just another long, hard shift in the plant, fruitlessly keeping an eye out for Ward, trying to discover _any_ sign of wrongdoing. “Yeah,” he said. “Come tomorrow morning, around eleven. If they’ve got anything to hide, if I see anyone out of place, or steering you away, I’ll notice. And if nothing else, I’ll try to get into Ward’s office.”

#

Once he’d let Gavin back out at the edge of the treeline, Lucas set the car back to Detroit, feeling less than optimistic about where this was all heading. He did not have the budget or the evidence to requisition anything from the bureau.

Agent Perkins would love to see him fail. Not that the special agent would do anything to sabotage the investigation, but he’d revel in the fact that an android had proved himself incompetent. A waste of resources and time.

Lucas’s hands tightened on the wheel as he thought about Perkins. No matter the cost, he had to come up with _something_. Something to prove that this all hadn’t meen a monumental waste of time and resources.

He couldn’t even admit to Gavin that he was having misgivings. He’d spent days already, chasing down the money coming out of Old Nick’s brewery. All of it, as far as he could see, was legal. No mathematical gymnastics, no laundering. Gavin was right, the optics were bad. They couldn’t be hanging around _waiting_ for a crime to happen.

If they found nothing tomorrow, they’d have to pack up and go home to be reassigned. And whatever sanctions he’d face for the waste of time and resources, he’d face.

#

Gavin woke to a hard, constant knock on his door. Gavin bolted out of a dream into disorientation and panic. “ _Whatthefu_ —”

“Gavin?” a voice called through the door.

Ward.

Gavin ripped the blanket away from his legs. There was only the barest tinge of blue light coming in through the one window in his cabin. Everyone in the compound got up early, but this was _early._ “Comin’” he rasped.

Out of habit he glanced around the cabin, looking for anything suspect. It was messy—his clothes were strung out across every available surface. No gun, no alcohol, just his cellphone charging on the desk, still pretty much useless inside the bounds of Ward’s homegrown cult.

He had nothing. Because he owned nothing.

There were only three steps from the bed to the door and Gavin stumbled them, slamming into wall. Fuck, he’d taken one of the sedatives last night and now he was too groggy to even see straight.

“Jesus, Reed. You okay in there?”

He wrenched the door open, wiping his eyes clumsily with the back of one hand. “Ward? What’s going on?”

The enigmatic leader, brewmaster, mayor, landlord, _whatever_ the hell Ward was, stood on Gavin’s porch in a thick canvas jacket and a dark, well-worn Stetson hat. An odd choice, something Lucas would wear, and it threw Gavin for a moment.

“You read that book?” Ward asked, tipping his head back so the brim of the hat cleared his eyes. “Cover to cover?”

“Three times,” Gavin said firmly, leaning slightly against the doorframe and crossing his arms over his bare chest. The air outside was cool, hinting at a biting winter.

“Find a shirt,” Ward said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

#

Gavin was starting to feel the sickness in his stomach, a dread that could easily spin out of control and take him with it.

Did Ward know? How?

Why now?

“I heard you powered through,” Ward said, ambling casually through the woods, over stones and trees like they were headed somewhere, like he was on a trail, though Gavin could see no discernable markers. “I know how rough the system withdrawal can be, and I heard you had it _rough_.”

“Yeah… I don’t think I’ve been that sick in a while.”

“Yet you still worked full shifts, and don’t think I haven’t heard the mischief Shane’s been pulling. That incident with the forklift—”

“My fault,” Gavin said quickly. “Wrong place, wrong time.”

“See,” Ward said, suddenly drawing to a halt, forcing Gavin to stop as well.

They were in the middle of a clearing, trees on every side, and Gavin wasn’t sure he knew the way back from forward. All the trees looked the same.

Ward cocked his head at Gavin, his eyes narrowed. “See, now that’s why I like you. It benefits you in no way to lie to me, and yet… you do. You’re a man I _wanted_ to trust from the very beginning. I could not put my finger on why at the time, and that… disturbed me. It’s why I stayed away and asked Casey to keep an eye on you. I inherently distrust everyone. My motto is and always has been, ‘Each Against All’. We are creatures built for autonomy. We _work_ for our _own_ survival.”

His smile was frozen.

“So here you are, controlling this situation with Shane. _Taking_ your power. You’re not going to rely on me to fight your battles and I think I sensed that, somehow, when we first met.”

The bad feeling was mounting. “What are we doing here, Ward?” Gavin asked softly.

“I wanted you to find a home here. I want these people to be like a family. Some of them like you. They wouldn’t have said it yet, of course. They reserve judgement until I give mine, a burden of trust I will never take lightly.”

Gavin didn’t answer. He was so tense, he thought his muscles might snap. The fog in his head still hadn’t quite lifted.

“Why were you dishonorably discharged, Gavin?” the leader of Orion asked. He hadn’t moved since he’d stopped and this felt like an ambush.

Gavin could feel his own pulse, weak and thready. His hands twitched. He looked away, to the edge of the forest where he could hear something moving. People whispering. The ghost of Detroit that night in the snow.

“Theft. Destruction of private property,” he said at last. “Burning androids.”

“Two years ago? That’s at least a year before the deviance event.”

Gavin nodded.

“So why then?”

This felt like a test. An important one. And his answer was harder than it should have been. It hit a little too close to home. The discharge was fake, but the rest… “I was… drinking. And the red ice epidemic was getting worse because people were losing their jobs. I just… I felt like it would save someone.”

Ward came closer and put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder in solidarity. “That’s sounds honorable to me, Reed, but the problem isn’t the androids.”

Gavin blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

“Androids are just machines. Perfect cogs perpetuating an imperfect system. I saw the uprising coming years and years ago. The people out there who are destroying our world, poisoning our oceans and tearing the minerals out of our land, they _identify_ with soulless things. They see a reflection of themselves in an inferior species and they would tell us these… counterfeits are the models to which we should aspire.”

He shook his head. “But machines weaken. Technology has always taken power, replaced it with complacence. Cameras. Computers, the net. They create more laws, more trouble and less _humanity_. Look what I created with the so-called ‘convicted’ population. I took away the collars of the system that imprisoned them, gave them a community, and they’ve _thrived_.”

“I’m grateful,” Gavin said awkwardly. Because he didn’t know what this was, why Ward had a hand on his shoulder, why they were here, what Ward _wanted_.

“I like you Gavin. I want you with us, but I need to know that every beat of your heart pumps _red_ , understand?”

Gavin nodded firmly. “It does,” he said.

Ward smiled. “Good. There are big things coming. We’re facing the end of an era, and the birth of a new one. You’ve earned your part in it all.”

He started walking again, pushing Gavin along at his side with that hand still on his shoulder, the touch filling Gavin’s stomach with sickening dread. Despite Ward’s words, he still felt… unbalanced. On edge.

They walked in silence the last few hundred feet to an outcropping of stone, a thickening of trees, towards the noise. The ground dropped away in front of him, revealing a small hidden valley. It wasn’t… organized, that surprised Gavin. Everything else about Orion was highly organized from the plant to the small commune at the base of Hell’s hill.

This was… old. Old and unkempt. No care put into maintaining the wood in the wet and cold Michigan winters and humid summers.

A wooden barn with paint peeling from its walls took up most of the small valley, and tall metal fencing lined the roughly circular clearing. It was protected by members of Orion with guns. Big fucking guns, and they held them across their chests with their fingers resting on the trigger-guards. Trained to use them.

Directly in the center was a pen. A fucking… pen of androids being herded into a truck printed with the same Old Nick’s logo on the side. They were naked, stripped down to their casing. A few looked up at him, their eyes blank and unseeing.

“This was the real work Gavin,” Ward said, treading ahead, down the ravine. He held out a hand, beckoning the detective down into the pit. “This was the frontier we held against Big Brother and the Brave New World.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's late! Another chapter is incoming in a couple of hours. I hope someone is still out there 😅


	7. Decisions

“Was?” Gavin asked and by some _miracle_ the word didn’t rasp out of his throat. He couldn’t tell what the mix of emotions in his chest was. Excitement? Dread? This is what Orion had been hiding? Android trafficking? Of course it wasn’t _legal_ , but… after all of this. It didn’t feel _right._

“We’ve come to the end of that chapter now,” Ward said, shrugging as Gavin stumble-slid down the ravine to join him. “This is the last of our stock. The last truck, and once we’ve seen it off, I’m heading South, to Colorado, and you’re welcome to join me.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see,” Ward grinned.

“What about my parole?” Gavin asked, grasping at straws. “I can’t leave the state.”

“You won’t have to worry about that, one way or another,” Ward said mildly. “You’re a free man, if you come with us.”

A sudden screech of metal had Gavin flinching into a crouch, looking wildly for an attack. But Ward just laughed, gesturing with a thumb towards the main building. “Quality assurance,” he said with a smile. “We get plenty of damaged goods that’s better sold as scrap than product. Come and see.”

Gavin stood, smoothing his jacket against his sides. He shook his head like he was embarrassed, like he wasn’t fucking panicking, like this was all fucking fine, and he wasn’t watching two dozen men and women stand naked in a paddock, shepherded by people he’d shared meals and laughter with.

He followed Ward, and stopped at his side, looking into the dark, muddy interior of the barn.

The shadows were fractured by flying sparks, blowtorches, and the blue glow of Thirium, clearer and brighter than the breaking dawn outside. It illuminated the smooth curves and jagged edges of android corpses, glinting off welding helmets and boxes upon boxes of biocomponents.

“I’m your man,” Gavin said, not daring to blink as the hollowness in his stomach grew like a cancer, consuming fear and sickness and leaving only frigid numbness in its wake. “Whatever you need, Ward.”

Ward swung a bracing arm around Gavin’s shoulders. “This,” he said fiercely. “Is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

He was standing too fucking close, Gavin could feel the other man’s grip on his neck, keeping him still, staring straight ahead. Sunlight was starting to filter through the trees, and somehow, that made everything worse.

Lucas would be on his way.

#

Lucas snapped the car door shut behind him as he looked up at Old Nick’s brewery and plant. It was his first time on the premises himself, though he’d seen enough pictures and blueprints to navigate it without his eyes 

It didn’t look open, though he could see a lot of activity inside. He pressed the edge of his cap against his temple self-consciously. It was strange, to be walking straight into a building full of people who hated him for what he was. Both an android and a cop.

He was wearing the parole officer uniform, black jeans and a white shirt, but as he’d left the office that morning, he couldn’t help but take his favorite hat—a fisherman’s hat with a thing, forward-facing brim and a short brocade thread across the cap.

But it was federal blue. Not even Gavin could complain.

It was late in the morning, but the front doors were locked. He knocked politely, folding his tablet under his arm as he watched a woman approach the door. Jennifer Crixton, 43, charged with Possession with intent to sell. She didn’t smile as she caught sight of him through the glass, and when she opened the door he was greeted by a rough. “What do you want?”

“I’m looking for Gavin Reed?” he asked. “I’m his parole officer sent by the—”

“We had a check last week from one of you people.”

“The point is that they’re unscheduled,” he said as brightly as possible. “If there is a problem, I can produce a warrant—”

She shook her head. “No, come in. Just… mind the mess. We’re doing maintenance today.”

 _Lie_. The untruth shivered just above Crixton’s face yellow-orange, not quite blatant enough to be red. He smiled and stepped across the threshold.

Into chaos.

There were more people here than he’d anticipated, and every face matched with a criminal record. From larceny to assault, it felt as if he were flipping through a mug book. A rouges gallery. He was overwhelmed by the information even as he collected it as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Two more steps, and then it all cut out. No faces, no database. He’d lost his connection to the network. He frowned, fighting the urge to stop and step backwards, back into the world of connection. It was like he’d lost a sense. Numb and muffled, maybe like how a human would feel in water.

He didn’t like it at all.

But he couldn’t let his unease show, following his guide through the bustle of humans moving cannisters and packing up bottles. “What kind of maintenance?” he asked blandly.

“Cleaning,” she said shortly. A lie she quickly tried to disguise with a change of subject. “You want Reed’s file? Nothing in it really, just some workplace injuries. He’s a good worker and he keeps his place clean. No complaints.”

“That’s good to hear,” Lucas agreed. “I have a lot of admiration for the work this place does. Rehabilitation and re-integration is often overlooked and underfunded.”

She turned to look back at him, her pace slowing as they neared the edge of the brewery. There were huge trucks being backed, not with beer, but with… equipment. And boxes. The two large bay doors were wide open to allow the trucks to park halfway into the building.

“We look out for each other,” Crixton said.

They’d drawn to a halt at the large doors on the other side of the plant, leading out to a large patio built against a hillside, looking over a slope, deep into the forest. The construction of the plant was strange, it seemed built more for observation than relaxation. From here he could see there was more activity inside the trees—around the cabins Gavin had told him about.

And mounting the hill was the Detective himself. Lucas relaxed a little bit. He hadn’t noticed how tense he’d been becoming until he caught sight of Reed climbing up towards him. When the Detective caught sight of him, he stiffened, turning his head to mutter something to an older man at his side.

Without the database, Lucas couldn’t run his identification, but then, he didn’t have to. The way the man was walking, his short, powerful build and the grey at his dark temples—this was Ward.

Lucas rather liked his hat—a wide-brimmed cowboy hat. The android blinked, fixing an image of the leader into his memory—he’d run it when he got back to the car.

“Morning!” Ward called out. “How can we help you?”

Lucas smiled in response. “Good morning!” he said. “I’m here for housing and work inspection for Mr. Reed.”

“You from the parole board?” Ward asked, the volume of his voice softening as he climbed the stairs up to the deck. “We’re always happy to have you boys around. The timing I must say, is bad, but can we give you the tour?”

Gavin was silent. Rigid. Lucas could see the physical effects of stress on the Detective. Raised heartbeat, perspiration.

Something had changed.

“I would appreciate that,” Lucas said. “But is there somewhere I can interview Mr. Reed? Privately? I just need to take him through the checklist, make sure he knows his rights in the search and such.”

Gavin stopped beside Lucas and Jessica, but Ward strode past them without pause, to the doors leading back into the brewery. “Not often I see an RK900 outside law enforcement,” Ward said.

Technically I still work for the department,” Lucas lied easily, earnestly. “I just wanted to make a difference in… a different way.”

“Noble of you,” Ward said. “But what a waste, right? All that… equipment you’re not using.”

Lucas felt his smile freeze.

“Please,” Ward said, “You’re welcome to use my office.”

Lucas smiled politely. “That’s very kind,” he said, shifting his grip on his tablet. “Thank you.”

Ward nodded, gesturing for the two of them to pass into the brewery. “Take your time. I’ll be back shorty if you have any questions Gavin here can’t answer.”

He slapped Gavin’s shoulder, but the Detective’s expression didn’t change.

The familiarity between Reed and Ward felt wrong, but Reed said nothing as they were led back inside to the slightly raised room in the middle of all the chaos of Orion’s operation. Whatever this operation was. Ward climbed the stairs, the keys jingling on his chain.

Lucas found himself blindsided by the absence of any anti-droid paraphernalia inside the office.

It felt… stock. There was no ornamentation, just bare nails and filing cabinets, a desk and three clean chairs. “We’re just in the middle of a spring cleaning,” Ward said brightly from the door, allowing Lucas to pass him. “If there’s anything you need, just give me a call. Someone will know where I am.”

The door closed quickly behind them and Lucas tracked the room, scanning it for any electronic interference. Sensing nothing, he cocked his head at Gavin, frowning.

“This isn’t… exactly as you described,” he observed carefully.

“They’re fucking clearing house, Lucas,” Gavin said finally, the first words he’d spoken since catching sight of the agent. His voice was rough, and Lucas could sense the danger the Detective was in. His emotions were fraught. Clearly he wasn’t thinking clearly. “We’re too late. We’re too fucking late. It’s already over—”

Lucas set his tablet down on the desk and raise a hand to hush Gavin. “Calm down. What’s goin on?

Gavin rubbed at his temples. “They’re trafficking androids,” he . “Androids and android parts—it’s _bad_ , Luke. It’s really bad. They keep them in these fuckin—it looked like a goddamn concentration camp. They must have been processing hundreds, but there were only… only like… twenty left.”

“What?” Lucas asked blankly, racing to catch up with this new information. He scanned the room again for listening devices. “What androids? What are they doing with them?”

Gavin shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. They’re moving them soon though. I couldn’t ask too many questions. Ward was already being fucking creepy, I swear he kept… touching me. My shoulder, my arm—”

That was… unexpected. “Was he… flirting with you?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. It was just fucking creepy. If it was flirting, he’s bad at it and I’m clearly out of practice. But he was… fawning over me. He wants to be my friend. I think he’s enamored with the police. Being a cop. Or… I don’t know, being _better_ than the cops.”

A beat of silence filled the room and Lucas hesitated. Not because he had to think, but because he had to find the right words. Clearly Gavin was in crisis. “Are you alright?” the android asked at last.

Gavin twitched spasmodically. “I just… fuck Lucas, they’re fucking _slavers_. I had no goddamn idea. How do you even keep an android slave these days? They could go deviant at any fucking second and snap your goddamn neck.”

“Easy,” Lucas said quickly. “I know. I can’t imagine—"

“They were taking them apart,” Gavin said, his voice shaking. _He_ was shaking, Lucas could see the tremble in the Detective’s hands and legs. He was in the primary stages of an anxiety attack. “The broken ones. In a goddamn barn. Like they were… it was a fucking _slaughterhouse_.”

“Okay,” Lucas said, trying to force Gavin’s thoughts to slow by pacing his words. “Okay. Keep calm.”

“How the _fuck_ am I supposed to keep calm? Why aren’t you calling in the goddamn feds? Why aren’t we going back there right _fucking_ now? If Orion goes south, out of Michigan, _way_ out of my jurisdiction--”

“Not out of mine,” Lucas said firmly.

That sparked betrayal in Gavin’s eyes, and Lucas fought the impulse to feel ashamed. Gavin was panicking and they couldn’t afford to panic. “Lucas,” the human said. “Call some damn backup. Close this shit down.”

“I have no signal on the property,” Lucas said firmly. “But we don’t know how many androids have been put through this, and where they ended up. It sounds like we have one opportunity to grab onto this supply chain, and we need those threads to find the rest. You can’t—”

With a hiss of frustration, Gavin slapped his hands to his face, digging his nails into his forehead. “Get me out Lucas,” he said, his voice rising unsteadily, muffled against his palms. “Get me out. I can’t do this. I can’t do it anymore.”

“Okay,” Lucas said quickly.

And that halted everything. Gavin’s pulse didn’t slow exactly, but at least it had stopped climbing. Lucas carefully knelt in front of his friend. They couldn’t afford for anyone outside to hear Reed have a melt-down, they had to be quiet.

“This is enough to take it up the chain,” he said as Gavin’s breath steadied. “I just… it seems like every time we get even an inch into this case, it just brings into scope just how _big_ this thing is and we still end up with more questions than answers.”

“Who’s buying the androids?” Gavin mumbled. “How are they keeping them insensate?”

“And why is this the last shipment? Obviously this is a lucrative business worth a lot of risk, and Ward hasn’t felt any heat over it yet. None that he can track at least… What change is he seeing on the horizon?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t—I didn’t think—"

Lucas reached out and pressed a hand to Gavin’s shoulder. The detective flinched away and Lucas retracted the touch. “I’m sorry,” the android said softly.

Gavin rubbed at his face, drawing in a deep, shaking breath. “We need to get out of here. We’re both in danger. Whatever’s happening tomorrow, I don’t think Ward is feeling any restraint from the law.”

“Okay,” Lucas said. “We go together. I’ll bring Perkins down, hand the case over to him.”

The door squeaked, Lucas whirled, distancing himself from Gavin.

Too late. From the way the intruder was leaning, and the grit ground into the knees of his jeans, Lucas could easily reconstruct where the human had been kneeling, his ear to the door.

Because Lucas hadn’t thought about actual. Fucking. Ears.

And now there was a gun in his face, held by a clearly excitable tall man. Lucas didn’t need the network to know who it was. He’d looked up a mugshot the first time Gavin had mentioned him.

“Gotcha,” Shane said, looking past Luke to Gavin, his eyes narrow with glee. “You fucking _traitor._ ”

#


	8. Fight or Flight

#

“Shane,” Gavin said softly, standing slowly, his hands raised. “You don’t—”

The man was looking at him, not Lucas, and that was his first mistake. ‘Look where your gun is pointing’ was generally a good rule in any situation, but especially when you were just a few feet away from an android with advanced combat programming.

Lucas turned sideways to minimize himself as a target and snapped his hand up at the same time, his fingers closing over the gun and jerking it and Shane forward into the office. Gavin reacted entirely on reflex, launching himself a half-step forward and kicking Shane’s legs from underneath him.

But the anarchist wouldn’t let go of the gun, his finger was tangled on the trigger, desperately trying to shoot. Lucas followed him down, sliding behind him and folding an arm around the human’s throat. Gavin danced out of the way, around the struggle, to slam the door shut. Too hard. The force shook the room and through the walls he could hear the echo in the wide, concrete floor of the plant.

 _Fuck_.

He turned back in time to see Lucas jerk the gun out of Shane’s hand—and the snap-pop of a joint leaving its socket. Shane’s strangled gurgle turned to a high-pitched squeak, his undamaged hand coming up to scrabble at the unforgiving metal and plastic wrapped around his throat.

Gavin cast around for a weapon.

But there was nothing. The office was _empty._ Nothing left of the anti-droid clutter that at least would be useful in _this_ scenario. “Fuck,” he hissed.

“Quiet,” Lucas commanded, now on one knee, unflinching as Shane raked at his face and arms.

Gavin snatched the gun from Lucas’s grip. “Wait,” Lucas hissed, “Don’t—”

Gripping the handle of the weapon, Gavin brought it sharply down on top of Shane’s head. The organic crack was again, horrifying. Shane bleated out in panic, his eyes rolling up. Gavin’s world narrowed down to the threat _—_ the man who in one instant stood for everything he was fighting. He was every guard outside the pen, all the sickness and pain he’d been subjected to over the past week. Every word in that goddamn manifesto. The gun in Lucas’s face.

“Gavin, _stop_.” The agent commanded sharply.

But the android didn’t understand. There was no safety anymore. Their cover had been blown. Again he brought the grip of the gun down onto Shane’s skull.

This time, the Orion member went limp, his arms flopping down over his sides, his legs sliding bonelessly against the floor, pushed by his own dead weight. And everything… stopped.

They both froze, intent on the sudden silence. There had been such a roaring in Gavin’s head, he couldn’t be sure what anyone outside had heard. Or seen. There was no time to hope that they were still under the radar. Gavin adjusted his grip on the gun until his finger was over the trigger guard.

The familiar texture and weight was a cooling balm on his heat and fear. He could feel himself rushing back, the fog clearing. Anxiety curled and coiled in his chest, tugging experimentally on his heart. He was starting to feel cold.

“He’s still alive,” Lucas said softly, his arm pulling back so he could take Shane’s pulse, his eyes scanning Shane from head to toe.

“Not really our concern right now,” Gavin pointed out. He edged to the blinds and peered through the slit as best he could. Outside he could see that some members of ORION had stopped moving, leaning against their burdens and exchanging quiet words. Curious, suspicious, but not afraid. Not alarmed.

Shane had been working alone.

“I had it under control,” Lucas said. “As soon as I had found a grip on his carotid, he would have been unconscious in under a minute without much lasting damage. You could have killed him,” Lucas said reproachfully. “That’s a grade 3 concussion. We should seek medical attention immediately.”

“Yeah,” Gavin said. “How about we call the fucking cops first before I’m dead and you’re taken apart in their murder shed?”

Lucas paused, obviously recalculating. “I still can’t reach the network.”

“Yeah, I know. Ward’s expanded the radius of his signal jamming. I don’t know how large it is now.”

“I could reach it from the main street.”

Gavin nodded. “Right,” he said. “We make a break for the street then, and you gotta upload fast—we may only have a few seconds.”

“I’ll walk. If I walk, I might make it far enough to send out a distress call.”

“No. No you won’t. That’s insane. They’re not just going to let us go—”

“Your cover is still intact,” Lucas said. “Shane is the only one who knows, and even if you haven’t done any brain damage, he’ll likely be very confused and nonsensical for a few hours. There will be a gap, a chance for you to escape safely.”

“What the hell are you talking about? You’re gonna leave me here? That’s _crazy_ Lucas.”

The android shook his head. “There’s a good chance they will kill us if we try to escape. They will try to kill me, certainly, as soon as I am seen as a threat. We have to alert the authorities to this operation as soon as possible.”

“I’m not arguing,” Gavin said raising an eyebrow. There was no time for this, but Lucas _was_ an RK900, he was capable. “But I don’t see a plan in that.”

“I run,” Lucas said firmly. “Alone. They have to think I am working alone and that you… I don’t know. You’re a good liar, Reed. You can figure out how to spin this.”

But Gavin was already shaking his head. “No,” he said. “ _Fuck_ no. That’s not a goddamn plan,”

“This has the greatest chance of success.”

“And if they catch you? No, scratch that. They _will_ catch you and they _will_ kill you before you reach the goddamn door.”

“Then you have to get to the authorities. You _have_ to figure out what their plan is. Reporting ORION is now our only priority.”

Gavin bit his lip, looking at the android. He shifted his weight on his feet. “No,” he tried.

“Yes. I can make it painless. You won’t feel anything. You’ll be out for ten minutes at most. No permanent damage.”

“I’m not going to let you do this. There’s another way.”

“We don’t have time to discuss this and you really cannot stop me. I can render you unconscious willingly or unwillingly. Either way I am leaving this office alone.”

“You’re my friend.”

It shocked them both. Gavin hadn’t really thought about the words until they were out there in the air around them, in the tiny shitty office. Lucas’s eyes were bright under the shadow of that _stupid fucking cap_.

But the android didn’t answer. He didn’t react at all.

And Gavin realized it was true.

“I didn’t care about leaving my life for this undercover shit. I didn’t care about prison. I didn’t care about solitary,” Gavin said. “Because it was fucking _easy_. It was fucking _familiar_. I don’t care about people, I never have. No one could keep up and I would never give them a chance to, and you’re the best fucking friend I’ve ever had since… maybe ever. Isn’t that _fucking_ pathetic?”

His eyes burned and he felt utterly hollow. Cold. Tired. Afraid.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he said. “Not again.”

Lucas said nothing.

There was nothing left to say.

Gavin wiped his face and with great effort got onto his knees. He didn’t look up. He didn’t want to see Lucas’s face. He didn’t want to hear a reply. The pity, the awkwardness. It would make this all so much more _fucking_ unbearable.

“Do it,” he whispered.

He tried to stop shaking. This was fine. This was okay.

No it wasn’t.

“Do it,” he insisted.

Lucas closed his arm around Gavin’s neck suddenly, pulling back, controlling Gavin’s body, forcing him to lean backwards.

This was not okay. Definitely not okay. Instinctively he started to fight, reaching up to grip Lucas’s elbow. He tugged on the RK900’s arm frantically, but everything was turning into light and the sound of his own blood rushed in his ears like a siren, his limbs going numb and cold.

#

Lucas straightened his collar, and smoothed his shirt over his chest, facing the door. Gavin lay on the floor to the left, his face red and his neck already starting to swell and bruise. He was in the recovery position, just in case. At least he was breathing deeply.

A friend. Was that what the Detective was? Lucas had never had a friend before, only colleagues. Like Perkins. There was a distinction there—his feeling for Gavin and his feelings for Perkins were not similar in the slightest.

But _friends_?

Gavin hated androids. Gavin hated everyone. Gavin hated _him_.

The android shook his head. This was not the time or place.

He slid the gun into his pocket and shifted his shoulders as he faced the door. There was a small circular stain of Shane’s blood on his suit, but the fabric was dark enough to hide it.

He had to keep calm. He slid a hand across his cap, feeling the line of the brim, running a finger along the embroidered edge.

He opened the door.

#

Gavin woke to being shaken violently.

“There he is!” someone exclaimed, Ward by Southern twang of the consonants. “There’s our boy!”

He blinked, there were spots over his vision and for a moment vertigo overtook him. He swiped clumsily at whoever had a grip on his shoulder.

Casey. He recognized the wild tangle of her hair before he caught sight of her bloodshot eyes. Crying? He’d never imagined he would see her cry.

 _What happened?_ he tried to say, but no sound came out of his mouth.

“He really did a number on you, huh? You’re lucky to be alive I reckon, those RK units are quite literal killing machines.”

Ward. Kneeling in front of him, his hat tipped back and a sympathetic smile on his face.

He didn’t sound worried.

Gavin tried to sit up, but Casey had to hold him there. He slumped against her. “Android?” he managed to grate out.

“Almost made it to the door,” Ward said.

Gavin’s heart lurched. He closed his eyes.

 _Almost._ It felt like a panic attack, the sucking, aching loss. But he could still breathe. He could still… think. Somehow that was worse—the certainty was _worse_ than the racing thoughts, the dread in the pit of his stomach.

Shane, somewhere in front of him, made a gurgling, confused sound, like a drunk waking up in the middle of an earthquake. Casey flinched, digging her nails into Gavin’s shoulder as Ward turned his attention on Shane. There was blood on the floor, a small pool of it where Shane’s head had been before someone had turned him over and attempted to revive him.

Ward sighed, looking at the small, dark puddle like it was a personal disappointment.

“I really hate blood,” he said. “I have a… a great _aversion_ to bloodshed. It turns my stomach. It always has. I think it’s the mess. I grew up in a messy house, it was sticky and cluttered and there was never any space to think.”

The leader of Orion lifted Shane bodily by his shirtfront and pulled him back until he was crumpled up against the desk. Gavin watched Shane’s face intently, for any sign of recognition, of panic or sentience. If he understood what was going on, he could blow Gavin’s cover with just a few words.

But the younger man couldn’t seem to focus his eyes, wincing and blinking rapidly. The only readable expressions on his face were confusion and pain.

“There’s nothing _clean_ about blood,” Ward said, and Gavin wasn’t sure who the man was talking to, if he was talking to anyone. “It congeals and flakes and stains. I never can get it out of my nails. And the smell? The smell never goes away. I’m very sensitive to it.” He turned, stretching out his shoulders.

“Is someone calling an ambulance?” Gavin managed to gasp out, his breath hitching uncontrollably between words as his lungs and vocal cords fought for priority.

“We can’t have ambulances here,” Ward explained gently. “You know that. We can’t have people coming around, asking questions this late in the game. Hell, Gavin, you’d be back in jail in a heartbeat on any _whiff_ of violence. We live delicately out here, us wolves, and all those little boys in blue do love to raise the alarm. They’ll want a report. They’ll want someone to come with them to give a statement, even if it’s only to vouch that this was an accident, and that would waste a whole day. A whole day we don’t have.”

He knelt in front of Shane, peering into the younger man’s glassy, unfocussed eyes. A fractured trail of blood slipped over his Lieutenant’s forehead, framing his eye and collecting again on the edge of his chin. “Yeah,” Ward said. “You’re not gonna power through this one, my friend.”

He dipped his head in respect, and the other members of ORION around the room did the same. Gavin pressed a hand to his bruised neck, watching the scene as his disorientation faded, replaced by an eerie sense of dread.

“He’s fine,” he rasped to the collective. “He just needs a doctor. It’s just a concussion.”

Ward, their leader, looked up, shaking his head slightly, sorrowfully. “We can’t afford the weight. If a man can’t stand for himself, he’s gotta be put down, for the good of the rest. It’s a mercy Shane understood.”

He leaned forward and wrapped his hands around Shane’s neck. The blood collecting on the young man’s jawline trembled and then flooded down, over Ward’s fingers where they pressed relentlessly into Shane’s flesh.

Gavin just been through that. It hadn’t been painless, like Luke had promised. It had been _terrifying._

“Ward?” Gavin reached forward weakly, but Casey restrained him, holding him back with ease. “Ward—don’t—”

Ward shushed him gently, his eyes not leaving Shane’s face. The gentleness of the noise was belied by the tremble in his arms as he forced Shane’s windpipe closed. Weakly, the other man swiped clumsily at the air, his eyes bulging, clearly unable to get his arms up far enough to batter at Ward or the grip on his throat.

“Ward,” Gavin whispered.

But it didn’t matter. He couldn’t save Shane. That he even _wanted_ to save Shane was as shocking as the front-row view of his death.

When it was done, the leader of Orion stood, holding his hands out delicately until someone passed him one of their aprons—the kind the brewers used on the floor. It was black, it didn’t show any of Shane’s blood as Ward cleaned the webs of his fingers quickly and efficiently.

Like he’d done it a hundred times before.

“What a mess. And we’re a man down now,” Ward said, like that hadn’t just happened. “You ready to pick up the slack, Gavin? Think you can… power through?”

Gavin swallowed thickly. It hurt. “Yeah,” he rasped.

Ward held out a hand and Gavin clumsily swiped at the air, slapping his palm to Ward’s. The leader pulled him up, too hard, too fast. Gavin overbalanced and immediately Casey was at his back, steadying him.

“Thanks,” he whispered, his eyes drawn involuntarily to Shane’s body leaning against Ward’s desk.

Casey handed him a bottle of water. “Drink up,” she said.

There was a smear of blue liquid on her forearm. Fresh Thirium.

“Thanks,” he repeated, finding his footing and forcing himself to stand without assistance. “You killed the plastic?”

She grimaced. “I wish. I got him once in the leg,” she said. “Slowed him down, but the fucker was quick.”

He paused. “He’s not dead?’

“No, just turned around. We slammed the lockdown on the main doors, so he ran out the loading bay, straight into the treeline. We shoulda closed the bays when he came in.”

Gavin fought the urge to smile. “Fuck,” he said.

“Oh, the boys will enjoy the hunt, and it’s good for morale,” Ward said easily, folding his arms across his chest, looking almost bored. “RKs are surprisingly hard to find, we’ve only had a couple 900s, and none captured in any sort of usable condition.”

“Yeah, we’ll get him,” Casey said. “We know these woods.”

 _He’ll be fine. He’s fine._ Relief unbalanced him even more and he held out a hand to the wall, just to feel something solid. “Okay,” he said blinking rapidly. “Okay, what do we do now?”

“Now we go make our last delivery,” Ward said. He strode past them all to the door, pulling it open and holding it as two members of Orion hefted Shane’s body between them, dragging him out into the brewery.

Outside, Gavin could see two trucks parked in the center of the plant. He frowned. He’d only seen one in the forest. Two dozen androids would fit easily in one of the enormous rigs.

“Why two trucks?” he asked.

Ward half turned, still propping the door open for the rest of his crew to file out behind him. He crooked up an eyebrow. “Payment,” he said, as if that should have been obvious.

Payment? Cash? They needed an eighteen-wheeler to transport _cash_? “How much money are we talking here?” Gavin rasped.

Ward grinned. “Oh, Reed,” he said. “Money? What use would anyone have for money in a _just_ society?”

#


	9. Payment

Lucas was losing Thirium, fast.

He’d shut off the valves and arteries that led to the damage in his left leg, and the interruption to the flow was causing his regulator to heat up. He’d had to slow his processor down to what felt like a crawl. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t track. Couldn’t even map his surroundings or cache his location.

And there was still no network.

How much of these woods were covered by the signal jam?

At least he’d managed to staunch the flow of blue=blood, not leaving a trail for his pursuers. They were not far behind. The woods were crawling with ORION members, men and women who knew the landmarks far better than he did.

He moved more quietly, but they _raced_ over the ground, knowing which trees and branches and rocks were stable. As his Thirium and biocomponents heated up, his reconstructions lost levels of detail. Soon he’d be guessing at routes, he’d be no better than a human.

But he could be quiet. If he could just gain enough ground, he could figure a way out of this mess. There was very little time to do so. _Panic will only chase you into a corner._

It was one of the mantras he’d learned while researching Gavin’s condition, and now it proved immeasurably helpful.

He glanced ahead. Through the trees, he could see the glitter of a pond in the late-morning sun. Perfect. He picked up speed, not bothering to be silent anymore.

Let them come.

It was a small-ish pond, fed by a few different creeks coming from the west, the direction of the mountains. Glacial runoff, maybe. It couldn’t be more than a dozen feet deep, but it was wide and the water was dark and murky.

Behind him he heard whistles and shouts. They were close and the trees would not protect him for long. His instinct had been to walk into the water, but he would be trapped there. They could wait for him to come out and there would be no way to hide then, even in the cover of darkness, which was hours away.

_Calm down. Think._

Tugging the cap from his head, he pressed it flat and wrapped it loosely around the rock. He tossed it into the edge of the still, dark water and then retreated quickly, into the shield of boulders and fallen trees.

And he heard them arrive, the shouts. _“Over here! He’s in the water!”_

And moments later, gunshots tore through the forest, loud and constant, swallowed quickly by the forest. They were like children’s firecrackers, just… _noise_. Discordant and rhythmless, they shot without finesse or aim into the dark water.

The poor wildlife…

It went on and on, so much noise that he didn’t even have to be careful as he backed away, keeping every other sense open for any stragglers coming toward him.

He slowly, carefully headed east, reaching out constantly for any connection to the world.

#

Why was everything moving so fucking _quickly_ now. Weeks of waiting and now Gavin had no control, no direction, no _plan._

His hands shook. He couldn’t fucking _stop_ shaking, and not all of it could be attributed to the rumble of the truck underneath him. He'd gone through two cigarettes already and he could feel the sourness of the smoke in his stomach, saturated into his mouth, tongue, and throat already.

And he kept his phone on, checking it every ten seconds, hoping to see a solid circle at the top right, instead of the steadily blinking spiral, reporting that he was out of range.

“I told you,” Casey growled at him from the driver’s seat. She was driving the massive rig herself, something that was probably illegal these days. “You’re not gonna get shit out of that phone. Jammer’s on the truck—gotta keep the cargo completely clean ‘cause that deviancy virus is _virulent_. You gotta wait until that truck’s gone.”

“I know, I was just… checking the time,” he coughed out, taking another deep draft of water. His throat was killing him and he couldn’t forget the image of Ward’s hands wrapped around Shane’s neck. Thinking about it made his skin crawl.

Ward. The Mayor. The Brewmaster. The Cult Leader. The Slaver.

“Where are we _going_?” he asked at last, stretching his legs as far as the seat would allow.

“Rendezvous,” she said briefly.

And that was all she gave him.

Didn’t matter. Lucas would have found help by now. The FBI would be coming down on all these fucking assholes and he could go home and fucking _sleep_. He tried to picture his apartment, the exposed brick fireplace and luxurious king bed with dark sheets and a warm, down blanket.

But all he could picture was the tiny cell back in ORION. The bed with its handmade blanket and the asshole cat lurking in the shadows, ready to tear at his ankles.

They drove for hours, long enough for Gavin to doze off intermittently. Each time he woke up it was to find his neck increasingly sore and the sun a little closer to the horizon. Until, finally, the drivers-side door slammed, waking him fully.

They were parked in the middle of a brilliant golden-green field. Through the windshield, Gavin could see an old farmhouse, the walls broken down by time and rough weather, and fields of overgrown weeds. Miles of it stretched as far as he could see, until the green land turned to dark, earthy mountains.

Members of ORION were scattered around the broken-down fences and walls, smoking, talking, most now walking towards the trucks where Casey and Ward were regrouping. Gavin blundered out his own door, almost tumbling down onto the road.

His grip on the seat yanked him upright again and he hissed at the stretch in his cramped legs and back. Ward smiled as he saw Gavin approaching, “Stay back,” he suggested. “They don’t know you.”

Gavin looked around. Did that mean ‘they’ knew everyone else here? _He_ didn’t know the dozen-odd grunts forming a guard around the two trucks.

And then, from the farmhouse, a woman appeared. She was short, and her hair was entirely iron grey. She emerged from the shadows in what looked like an expensive plaid jacket and skirt and she called out to Ward specifically, her teeth baring in welcome and excitement.

“ _Tovarisch!”_ she called to him fondly. “ _Ya uzhe nachala volnovat’sya!”_

Russian. Ward was selling androids to the _fucking_ Russians.

And of course, that made a certain kind of sense. The center of android manufacturing had always been in Detroit and Russia’s demand for a hardy workforce had certainly not gone _down_.

Ward shook his head, striding forward to meet the woman. _“Probki, dorogaya. Ne o chem bespokoit’sya.”_

Gavin could do nothing but stand back and watch as the deal unfolded. His Russian ran to the extent of ‘Hello’ and ‘Thank you,’ but everything he’d been taught in high school had long ago been replaced with far less useful information.

The woman had her own crew, just three men who stood in the doorway to the old farmhouse, large black weapons held against their chests, non-threatening, but… ready.

While he had a pause, Gavin quickly opened his phone and typed a brief message into his notes. _Stolen androids._ He squinted up at the container—the letters and numbers on the top right corner of the truck-- reference information for the Maritime container port in the Detroit harbor—the missing link to the android assaults in the city. ORION had been hunting androids, or had lost control of them at the docks.

And Anders and Rasa had taken the fall.

But why wouldn’t they talk? They could have pled out of life if they’d given up Ward. What hold did Orion have on men still in prison?

Fuck if he knew what the actual numbers on the truck meant, but they were there for a reason, one _had_ to be an identification number. One couldn’t take a chance of _losing_ a shipment of trafficked androids to Russia.

Casey nudged his elbow. “The fuck are you doing?” she hissed.

He rolled his eyes and completed the text as quickly as he could, selected the whole message, copied it and deleted it, tucking his phone into his jacket pocket. “Jesus,” he whispered back to her. “I can’t fucking look at my phone? I don’t understand this shit.”

“Don’t be fuckin’ rude,” she said, and her gaze was sharp, suspicious. On the long ride from the compound, he hadn’t done much to allay her suspicions, and she certainly had suspicions. Casey was no optimist, and she’d been close to Shane.

The information was in his clipboard now, ready to be pasted and sent as soon as the truck with the androids and jammer left the area. He leaned against the empty truck, crossing his ankles and adopting a posture of lightly intrigued boredom.

Finally Ward and the woman embraced. “Walk bold!” she said, smiling as she broke away. “Your work is well done.”

Ward nodded, pressing his hands to his chest as he stepped backwards. “It’s been an honor,” he answered, waving goodbye as she gestured for her men to come forward and take control of the truck. They had not inspected the androids, and whatever Ward was getting out of the transaction, Gavin had yet to see that either.

The doors on the truck slammed. However the woman and her guards had arrived at the rendezvous, they were clearly leaving in the truck full of freshly wiped androids. Gavin watched her through the windshield, trying to memorize her features. It would always be imperfect—seeing someone once with human eyes wasn’t going to convince a jury of much.

She spoke quickly to the driver, the smile gone from her face. Gavin narrowed his eyes, rubbing absentmindedly at his neck. Russians. Fucking _Russians._ An international case, which meant this case was fucked. Lucas wouldn’t even have much say in it now.

The truck started with the roar that only came from antique gas engines and slowly backed out into the field. It drove west, away from the farmhouse, cutting straight through the cornfield. Gavin looked down at his phone, at the blinking spiral.

Still no signal.

But at any moment…

“Reed!” Ward called.

Gavin covered his eyes and trotted to the leader of ORION, until he stood at Ward’s side, on the threshold, looking into the dappled shadows inside the farmhouse.

The gutted house was full of boxes. Row up on row of plastic boxes piled neatly against the walls. The largest was a bright orange container in a roughly hexagonal shape, like a wide, extra-tall coffin.

Ward was practically vibrating with excitement. “Pull it all out,” he said, his voice pitched up an octave and a wide grin on his face. “Let’s go. Let’s move!”

No one said anything, they simply obeyed. Gavin found the work familiar—he’d done a similar job at the brewery, moving kegs and pallets of beer. The contents of the crates didn’t shift, but he was starting to get an idea of what was inside, by the weight, the reverence and care with which the ORION members handled the boxes.

They formed a queue from the dilapidated farmhouse to the truck and passed box after box along the line. They were heavy and unwieldy and soon enough Gavin was dripping in sweat. Finally, when the boxes were removed and re-stacked outside at the mouth of the rig, Gavin checked his phone again.

No signal. _How fucking big was that jammer?_ he wondered.

“Open ‘em up,” Ward commanded. “Let’s see it.”

Gavin held his phone up to the sky as if that would help, wandering closer to the road.

Nothing.

Fuck.

“Reed! Take a look at this!”

Fucking Ward. Gavin looked back to the group, and on top of everything else… it was too much.

Afternoon sunlight shone on row after row of guns. Grenades. Shields, body armor and helmets.

Weapons.

“One hundred automatic rifles with quality scopes. Eighty handguns, six thousand pounds of ammunition. Six dozen grenades, thirty full suits of riot-grade armor—” Ward let out an exhilarated laugh. “An army,” he said. “This is my _army_.”

Gavin blinked, trying to process this. “Why—” he started to ask, but Ward was already walking towards the orange crate. Casey was supervising the removal of the enormous orange lid. It had been cinched tight, the clips firm.

“And the pièce de résistance _…”_ Ward pointed to the center of the gathering, where a hush had settled into the workers. They were careful, reverent, as they removed the violently orange lid from the biggest of the crates.

“Is that a fucking bomb?” Gavin whispered.

“New to the market,” Ward said, a wide, proud, smile on his face, “Our Russian friends have a beautiful name for it in their own language, which roughly translates to ‘the urban planner’. It’s never been used before outside of test conditions, but I have seen… the aftermath. This is just the first one, I have a supply chain set up, a delivery system already in place… but this is the opening shot. The call to arms.”

Gavin couldn’t breathe. “Where…”

“Where else?” Ward asked. “The center of Android City.”

Ward the android trafficker. Ward the Psychopath. Ward the fucking Terrorist.

“Don’t worry,” Ward said, sensing the sudden freeze in Gavin’s thoughts but failing utterly to recognize its roots. “We’ll be far away by then. Our little plot in Colorado is… gorgeous. There’s mountains and rivers, wildlife and solar panels—it’s paradise, Gavin. While the cities tear themselves apart, we’ll be far away, watching it all happen, seeding our people back out into the world to start colonies of their own—rules and societies where men bund themselves freely to causes that _empower_ them instead of making them impotent bystanders to their own race’s dissolution.”

“Anarchy,” Reed said hoarsely. “That’s… that’s what this is about?”

“That’s what it has always been about,” Ward said, cocking his head at Gavin. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know that. We are all men and women pushed to the fringes of this machine, we’ve all been looking for a fresh start—a way to find happiness and contentment. We are the _strong_ , the _purposed—_ ”

Gavin stopped listening.

It was crazy talk, utter… insanity. But it had built… _this_. All of this. The android slaves, the guns, the bomb, ORION. It started small, with words, with a couple of androids attacked at the docks in the harbor and it led here, to a cornfield full of international criminals and a city-ending bomb.

Gavin could see the large orange lid being lifted, about to cover the bomb again, and he stepped forward quickly, touching the steel lightly with his right hand.

Ward followed him closely, a fond smile on his face. “Beautiful,” he said. “isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Gavin whispered, dropping his phone into the crate and disguising the noise with a sudden, violent cough, slapping his hand against the orange plastic. A collective gasp rose quickly and died down

“Hey,” Ward said sharply, pulling him away. “Easy now. Be a little careful around Bessie, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Gavin mumbled. “Sorry.”

He had to trust that Lucas had gotten out. That he was tracking the phone.

Because wherever that bomb was going—Lucas had to get there first. He _had_ to.

#

Once they were back inside the brewery, Gavin was dead on his feet. He was bone tired and he could feel the room starting to spin. He couldn’t stay here, he needed to make a run for it and _not_ look back.

But the prospect made him want to curl onto the floor and stop breathing. Now he knew everything, and it was… so much more than he’d bargained for.

Casey left his side to talk with a small group of campers who’d stayed behind in the brewery to pack..

Gavin fixed his gaze on their fearless leader where he stood atop a pyramid of kegs.

“Tomorrow!” Ward announced, his voice ringing against the brewing equipment, the tin walls, steel catwalks, and concrete floors. “Tomorrow it begins! We'll tke back our power! Start new lives!"

A roar of approval arose from the assembly, and the noise filled Gavin’s aching head. He turned away from them and started to stumble towards the door. He had to get out. He _needed_ to get out.

But someone had planted themselves in front of the door that exited out onto Hell’s main street. “Cigarette,” he mumbled, trying to reach past them.

“I don’t think so,” Casey hissed. “Detective Reed.”

He blinked first at her shoes and then let his gaze travel up her jeans to her ragged sweatshirt and finally to land on her face. Until now, he’d thought anger was her baseline emotion, but now he realized he’d never actually seen her angry

Because now…. Now she was mad.

He frowned, wincing as his headache started to prick at his vision. “Wha—”

The darkness wasn’t slow this time, it didn’t come in multicolored spots and panic.

There was just a single sharp pain across the back of his head, and then a deep dark pit. He fell down and down and down.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to rrrNightingale for the invaluable Russian phrases! If there's any wonkiness with the language it's completely down to me not explaining the situation correctly!


	10. Colorado

Detroit wasn’t dark. It was orange fire and leaping shadows.

Ward stood in front of him, a lit cigarette in his hand. Did the leader of Orion smoke? Gavin couldn’t remember.

 _“Close your eyes_ ,” he suggested kindly.

His feet were unsteady, the ground below him felt hollow and thin, ready to drop at any moment. He looked down, and realized he was standing in a dumpster with rotten garbage caked to the rusting metal.

He was going to be burnt alive.

Before Ward could toss the cigarette, before anything else could happen, terror snapped him out of the dream.

#

He felt dazed. Drugged. His eyelids were too heavy to lift and the back of his head stung and ached in turns. He was confused, for a few long moments. He was sitting up, and for a moment between the stiffness in his joints and the chill in the air, he wondered if he’d fallen asleep on the couch in his apartment.

But he hadn’t been there in months.

And then he remembered.

The air was thick and his tongue was swollen.

“You’ve been out for a while,” Ward said, sitting on a barrel in front of Gavin, a handgun dangling between his knees. “Welcome to the Centennial state, Reed. Colorful Colorado. Can’t you just taste the mountain air?”

Ward leaned back and Gavin winced, craning his bruised neck up to see his captor take a deep breath of the dark, dank basement. “Ah,” the leader of Orion said, grimacing. “Maybe not.”

 _It doesn’t matter_ , Gavin thought grimly. Lucas was FBI. He could cross state lines.

He took in the rest of the room. It was small, the edges crowded with a mish-mash of _things_. Piles of boxes and papers, clothes hangers and cabinets. There were no windows, only one door at the top of a long, rotten flight of wooden stairs. The garbage leaned at the edges, chaotic and uneven.

Gavin’s chair had been bolted to the center of the floor. Above him, a single unshaded bulb buzzed like an insect. The light illuminating the storm of dust and spores floated around down here, swirling in eddies around the slightest disturbance.

Ward patiently waited for Gavin to take in his surroundings, saying and doing nothing.

Lastly, Gavin saw the tray at Wards side. It was small and metallic, standing on long legs and small wheels. It looked… medical.

On top of the tray, arranged _very_ neatly in comparison to the mess around them, were an odd collection of items. A black tablet, a washcloth, and an iron.

The iron was plugged in, the cord running to an industrial, bright orange extension that disappeared up the stairs.

Gavin could see the steam rising from the pores in its surface.

“Okay Ward,” Gavin said, the words sloughing out of his bruised throat. “What’s going on?”

The leader of Orion leaned back, slipping his hand into his pocket. A small, familiar rattle told Gavin immediately what he’d found. Shit.

Ward put the small orange bottle on the metal tray, where it made a tiny solid sound, like the clicking of a lock. “What is this?” Ward asked softly.

Gavin said nothing, just set his jaw into a hard, mulish line.

“We looked this up, and wouldn’t you know, this is medication for a psychiatric disorder? Anxiety. Depression. Psychological angst. That’s what happens, when you pretend to be something you’re not, Detective Reed.”

“I’m not a Detective anymore,” Gavin bluffed uneasily. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, Ward.” His shoulders ached, the bars of the chair digging into his arms, grinding his flesh against his bones.

“I offered you a way out of this,” the other man said softly. “But you’d rather be broken in their society than free in ours.”

“Oh, is this freedom?” Gavin rasped, raising an eyebrow. “Is that what’s happening now?”

“It’s what will _inevitably_ happen,” Ward said. He looked… pensive for a moment and Gavin seized the opportunity to speak.

“Ward, I don’t know what you’ve seen,” he said. “I don’t know who you’ve talked to, but I’m not… You know me Ward—”

“I know only one thing in this life, Reed,” Ward said calmly. “And that’s Each Against All.”

“Yeah maybe I take those pills, but it’s just to sleep. I’m not a trai—”

He stopped speaking as Ward reached languidly to the tray and scraped up a thin black tablet.

“Your friend left this behind,” Ward said softly. “On my desk. A little… breadcrumb.”

Gavin swallowed. The movement hurt. “He’s not my friend.”

Ward narrowed his eyes with a wry smile. “I… _despise_ liars, Reed.”

He shook his head slightly and leaned back, waving Lucas’s tablet up to the light. “I had my people take a look at it. I employ good people, they’re very _bright_ , the kind of people that can hack androids in more ways than one.”

Hechewed on his lower lip, considering Gavin before he raised the tablet up to his eyes, giving Gavin the best possible view of the screen. “Take a look at this,” he said softly.

He flicked the corner, and suddenly, a few inches from Gavin’s nose, Lucas’s memory of the precinct popped into view: Connor, Hank, and the pink glitter.

With none of the hilarity it had once made him feel.

Gavin frowned, though he could feel his stomach start to drop, the sourness of discovery squeezing at his chest. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Three years?” Ward asked softly.

Blinking, Gavin met the older man’s gaze. “What are you—”

“You were dishonorably discharged two years ago?” he asked. “Taken to court, charged a couple months later?”

Gavin swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “look Ward, I don’t have—"

“Tell me, Detective Reed,” Ward said. “Why do you have a fucking desk in the central city goddamn precinct as of _last week_?”

Gavin paused.

Fuck.

Oh… fuck. The desk was clean, but not abandoned. A temporary shift replacement had taken it over, but the placard was still there. _DET. REED._

He scoffed at the sight uneasily, shaking his head. “What? Come the fuck on, that’s not—”

“My people didn’t wait for me,” Ward said softly. “This is a _strong_ community. My contacts are their contacts, so while we were out collecting the armory, they reached out to the city and found a few _trustworthy_ people to go in and _physically_ ask for Detective Gavin Reed. And would you know something _astonishing?_ The receptionist kindly informed us Detective Gavin Reed was out on assignment, and that she didn’t know when he’d be back. See that’s the problem with _weak_ people, Gavin. They rely on technology to keep them strong, until they’re a burden on the very things they’ve built.”

“I don’t…" but his mind failed to provide him with an excuse—a way out. The longer he hesitated, the worse any denial would sound.

Ward tossed Lucas’s tablet back onto the metal tray. It clattered there, knocking over the pill bottle, almost tipping the iron onto its side. “Who have you been working with, Reed?” he asked. “We’re not anywhere _near_ DPD stomping ground.”

Gavin blinked up at him. “Honestly, Ward. I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he said. “I haven’t said shit to anyone, I don’t—”

“You were never in prison, not really,” Ward said softly. “Isn’t that right? You, _Detective_ Reed, are an insult to _our_ fuckin’ sacrifice.”

He stood, his chair scraping back from his knees, tumbling away. He picked up the iron and Gavin leaned back in his chair. “Ward,” he warned. “Ward—wait.”

The other man leaned forward, taking Gavin by his shirtfront. “Yeah? What am I waiting for?

The flat side of the iron was only a few inches from Gavin’s face, closing in on him. “What do you want?” he asked, as evenly as he could. “We can talk—we can—”

“I want you to stop fuckin’ _lying_ , Ward hissed.

Sweat ran from Gavin’s temple, dripping from his jaw and sizzling on the iron. He leaned away as far as his bonds would allow, straining his eyes to try and keep the flat spear of metal in sight. Already it was too close—too hot, searing the delicate flesh on his neck and chest. His clothing only slightly blocked some of the heat.

“Ward—”

The iron pressed forward and down, finding its place between his collarbone and jaw, like it had been made for the fit.

Gavin felt his flesh cooking, peeling, pinching and warping under the hot metal. He wrenched against his bonds, fighting with every ounce of strength to get away. He couldn’t scream, he couldn’t open his mouth wide enough let go of the noise that had built up inside of him. The sound that erupted out of him was primal. Guttural. Animal.

When finally Ward pulled the hot press of metal away, Gavin felt its resistance. _Felt_ his crusted, burnt blood try to hold onto the metal, and he hissed his breath, expelling it in a shaking, involuntary whimper as the iron pulled free. For a moment, as the cool air rushed across the burn, the pain was worse. _How could it possibly get worse_?

Ward flicked off the iron and set it back down on the tray. “Yeah,” he said, dusting his hands like a workman looking down on a job well done. “That’s much better.”

With delicate precision, he picked up the tablet and took a picture of Gavin in the chair, neck frozen at an awkward angle. His flesh still burned with every breath, with every movement he made. His body juddered, shock already setting in.

Ward peered down at his handiwork on the screen for a second before turning it around, letting Gavin see himself—a pale figure in the bright light, his surroundings hidden in contrasting shadows. The fresh wound on his neck was the central focus of the picture— pale pink, violent red, and sickly white. His blood-drop tattoo was completely wiped away, distorted by swelling blisters and burnt tissue.

“No more lies, eh Gavin?” Ward said, pulling the tablet back, setting it on the tray. “You fucking _Bot_ -lover. Race- _traitor_.”

Gavin couldn’t speak. He could only concentrate on controlling his breathing, trying to think past the fire set into his flesh. He froze in his chair, feeling the searing pain of his pulse like his veins and arteries had been skinned and exposed to the dark, dirty basement air.

Ward cast his gaze up, to the dark beams above them and shook his head slowly. “I didn’t think it was possible, but you’ve made me angry, Gavin. I was looking forward to watching the world burn with you at my side. I imagined we’d part as friends in a landscape of new possibilities. Free men at last.”

His eyes were cold and bright, as hard and lifeless as gemstones.

“So you know what, Detective? I’m going to stick to that plan. We’re gonna watch it all burn, together. Victory tastes so much sweeter when sacrifice has fed it, when it’s _fairly_ won. I want you to live in my world, Gavin. The beautiful irony of this, the irony its always been, is that your Hell? Is my fucking _paradise_.”

He leaned forward. “I haven’t got any questions for you, Reed. It doesn’t matter who you’re working for or what they know. It doesn’t matter anymore, if it ever did. I’m off your grid. I’m not a part of your system. I’ve made my _own_ goddamn society and it is going to thrive on the bloated, rotting corpse of yours.” 

Gavin blinked at him. His mind whirled with pain and the sudden, unshakeable certainty that Ward was going to kill him, right here, right now. The man was crazy. Fully _insane_.

“You and I arenot so different,” Ward whispered. “I worked for the government. I was once a good little soldier, so they showed me the edges of their control—the cracks in this grand glass house where the _real_ men and women play with power. Just take a step back and you’ll realize there is no law, no cops or robbers, just _people,_ and they taught me how to break people away from the systems that controlled them. I can kill gods and rewrite history _._ I’ve been doing it for years, and you think you can stop me? A city fucking cop? This is above your paygrade, Detective.”

Gavin couldn’t breathe. The world greyed at the edges and he started to wheeze, fighting to pull anything into his lungs. Where the fuck was Lucas?

He heaved. His stomach rolled. He was dying—

Carelessly, the leader of Orion reached forward, grabbing Gavin’s shirtfront again, pulling him forward and sending a wave of pain crashing through the rising darkness, parting it with white-hot light. “Come on,” Ward snarled into his face. “You’re stronger than this. You’re not gonna break that easy, right Gav? You’re gonna power through?”

#

Things started to get hazy. Fast. Between the pain and the anxiety poisoning his veins with every heartbeat, he could hardly keep track of what was happening around him. There was no way to tell the time, except that sometimes, when the trapdoor above the stairs opened, sunlight hit the top step, just a flash of gold in the darkness, all too briefly illuminating the cradle of garbage he was being kept in. So it was day.

Lucas hadn’t come. He was still stuck _here_.

And then it was night.

He had to be tracking the phone by now.

Orion didn’t let him sleep, and they had to get creative because Gavin had reached the limits of his endurance long ago. To keep him awake, they played chaotic music through a network of speakers, their fraying, aged cords circling him. He could _feel_ the infection setting into the burn on his neck. The pain was unbearable, any movement set bolts of agony through his body.

He couldn’t think about escape. He couldn’t think about _anything._ His mind whirled with shock and fear. The only thought in his head, whirling in circles, inescapable and somehow even more terrifying than the darkness and pain: _Where. The Fuck. Is Lucas?_

And then it was day again.

The discordant sounds pushed against his eardrums. The light never flickered, only buzzed endlessly, a single, unbroken vibration. They never left him alone, there was always someone in the basement with him, listening the breath wheeze through his lungs.

Usually it was Casey or Ward, and everyone else kept to the shadows where they seemed to shiver with a quiet, nervous energy. Soldiers on the eve of battle. Only Ward seemed to be immune.

And then night.

And Lucas _still_ hadn’t come.

Surely he’d found the shipment. He’d freed the androids. He would be coming for Gavin at any moment. Any hour.

Day.

And the world started to slow again. He was _exhausted_ , but the pain had started to ebb away from his neck. Not that it was becoming numb, but he was too tired to do anything about it. Too tired to care about it.

Casey didn’t speak to him at first, just kept him awake by any means necessary. She liked to use a tazer, just short bolts on his legs, his arms, his chest. Sometimes she just rested her hand on the iron when she could see him start to waver on the edge of unconsciousness.

Finally when she did speak to him, it was with an air of undisguised hatred, and she only wanted to know one thing: “Did you kill Shane?”

“Both of us,” Gavin said tiredly, the words croaking out of his throat. “watched _Ward_ kill Shane.”

She twitched her head sideways, dismissing the truth. “Did he find you out? Did he know?”

“I heard about your kids.”

Casey’s fist landed across his face, snapping his head sideways. It sent a bolt of pain through his body, from his head all the way to his toes, rolling in waves from the damage on his neck. Gavin rolled his tongue over his teeth, collecting enough blood to spit out onto the concrete. He looked up, raising an eyebrow. “I think you’d be a great mother.”

“You really want to shut up,” she said coldly.

“Why would I want that? I enjoy our conversations so much.”

“You want to keep pushing me?” she asked, her eyes bright and manic, too wide to be normal. “Do it, Reed. Please. Push me one more goddamn time.”

He craned his head up and grinned with as much strength as he could muster. “Oh, am I gonna get sent to my room?”

“I gave you a chance.” She smiled right back. “I’m really fucking glad you didn’t take it.”

Turning, she stomped up the stairs, each one creaking under her weight. She knocked on the ceiling and the trapdoor opened, letting in a pool of golden sunlight.

Day.

 _Fucking_ Lucas was taking his _fucking_ time.

“Get Ward,” she called up to whoever was above. “The Detective’s feeling talkative.”

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter incoming in maybe... 4 hours? Maybe a little more. XD Thank you so much for the comments and kudos! I really appreciate any and all support! Tomorrow comes the end, and stick around for the Author's notes! They come with some sweet bonus content that I can't wait to share!


	11. The World According to Ward

#

Four of them came down. Ward, Casey, and a grunt he could barely recognize from the plant. They walked with the casual purpose of having done this all before. Casey was weighed down with a large, clearly full watering can and the stranger carried a massive power drill against his hip. The sight had Gavin sitting up in the chair, steeling himself for some _sick_ fucking repeat of the fucking iron. Already his breathing shallowed out and he set his jaw stubbornly against the temptation to show fear.

Grinding his teeth only made the tender skin on his neck tingle—on the edge of burning.

“Casey says you’re feeling chatty this morning,” Ward said, hanging back as Casey and the henchman drew closer. Gavin fixed his eyes on the leader, trying to ignore the gravitational pull of that drill. “Question is, have you actually got anything worth _saying_?”

His muscles were so tight they could snap as the henchmen knelt down at his feet. The drill disappeared from his vision.

“Fuck you, Ward,” Gavin hissed.

“Oh, please don’t be so entertaining for my sake.”

Gavin started as the power drill whined to life with a grating, grinding, cracking noise. He let out an involuntary hiss of fear, but there was no pain. It did not touch him. Instead, the chair shook and he realized they were un-bolting it from the floor.

Ward scratched his chin, as if he was bored. “Shall we make this interesting?” he asked the room at large. “See interrogations are only fun if there’s something to _win._ Answers, submission, the _truth_. _”_

He felt when the last bolt was drawn out of the floor, but was still caught off guard as the chair tipped back. Despite his best efforts to break free, to cause as much damage and struggle as possible, he was useless.

“What’s your partner’s name?” Ward asked.

“Fuck you,” Gavin said, the words strangled by the strange upside-down angle he was being held at.

The older man grinned. “That’s a good start,” he said. “Touch a nerve, did I?”

His face caught in dark shadows protected from the single bare lightbulb by the brim of his hat. “Average time it takes to break a company man is fourteen seconds,” he said. “And when we were questioning our prisoners, we’d have a doctor on hand, just in case it all went too far. Ready to resuscitate—that’s what they put on their logs. I used to wonder about that—how that all fit with their _hypocritic_ oaths.”

He grinned. “But Casey here has practiced a dozen times already and if I was going to trust anyone to _properly_ drown me, it would be her. What’s your partner’s name?”

Gavin was starting to panic. He fought it valiantly, but still his voice trembled as he replied. “Fuck. You. Ward.”

“Don’t worry,” Ward said cheerfully. “We’ll give you plenty of chances to get this one right.”

He delicately draped a rugged white hand-towel across Gavin’s mouth, and Casey poured a long, constant stream of water onto his face. It filled his nose and mouth, but he couldn’t spit it out past the cloth over his lips. He gagged on water, spluttering past the constant stream.

Gavin had learned to swim in the academy-- pretty late in life, and had also learned then that he _hated_ the sensation of water on him, around him, below and above him. He didn’t like being surrounded, or his breath being trapped in his chest.

So he’d _really_ fucking hate to die like this, his hands trapped behind his back by hard metal cuffs and dirty, metallic water in his mouth and nose and eyes and fucking _trachea_. He was going to die in some grungy basement, like a fucking asshole.

Ward was saying something, but Gavin couldn’t hear the words.

He choked, bursts of light and color going off behind his eyes. His synapses dying, his brain starving for oxygen and the hallucinations starting to find cracks in his sanity.

 _Not like you have the brain cells to spare_ , he could hear Lucas whisper in a memory, dry and sardonic as only his RK900 could be. And for some reason it suddenly seemed _really_ fucking funny to Gavin.

The rag was pulled away from his face and he hacked at it, coughing and wheezing for air until Casey slammed the chair forward, jerking his body against the restraints and water poured out of his nose and mouth, his lungs inflated with air again.

But he still couldn’t breathe. He choked on laughter and water.

“Care to share the joke?” Ward asked lightly, but Gavin could here the barest edge of annoyance in the Orion leader’s voice.

He spat the taste of stale water out of his mouth, coughing and shaking the water out of his eyes and hair. “Nothing,” he said at last, when he’d regained control of his air supply, grinning like a madman. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“I think he’s enjoying it,” Casey hissed, rubbing her wrists.

“Are you that kind of sick fuck, Detective?” Ward asked softly. There was nothing left of the calm, controlled man who had hired him to Old Nick’s brewery. There was something animal about the way he moved now, powerful and lethal.

The leader of Orion was enjoying this. He was a sadist—how had Gavin not seen that before? He must have kept it so tightly controlled, hidden, maybe even sated by his tight grip on the compound.

“What. Is that fucking bot’s _name_?” Ward asked again, impressing each one of the words.

“Fuck you,” Gavin said, the vowels lost by breathless pain.

“Again,” Ward said.

The chair tipped back and the rag slapped down, and Gavin’s world became small. He wrenched against his bonds, but all too quickly, water filled his mouth. Gagging and spluttering he tried his fucking _hardest_ to escape, but there was nowhere to go. Nothing he could do until Ward whipped the rag away.

“What’s your partner’s name?” the leader asked.

“Lucas,” Gavin choked out.

And for a moment everything slowed down. They set the chair back onto four legs again so Gavin could cough water out onto the rotten concrete.

“Lucas,” Ward said, tasting the name thoughtfully.

He smiled down at Gavin. “Good game,” he said. “In fact, I feel like another round.”

Gavin shook his head. Every muscle trembled with the effort of trying to relieve the pressure on his bonds. “Who,” Ward said clearly, as Casey refilled the watering can from a tap or hose somewhere behind Gavin. “Were you working for?”

Gavin shook his head. He was exhausted, taut. He didn’t want to fucking _be here_ anymore.

The rag snapped across his face again.

#

When they left, Gavin weakly peered up to watch him push open the trap doors. No light

Night.

The music began again, and just because he could, because there was nothing else to do, he screamed as loud and as long as he could, ejecting as much rage and pain as he could. It wasn’t much—between the iron and the fucking watering can, they’d broken him. They’d fucking _broken_ him.

He sagged against his bonds. “Where the _fuck_ are you?” he whispered, barely any sound escaping from his throat. “Luke, you _fucking_ asshole.”

Somewhere above him, he heard a plaintiff meowl.

Trouble. Of course they’d brought the cat with them. All the way to fucking _Colorado._

The trapdoor opened again, apparently no exception to the rule that nothing must ever get in the way of Orion’s cat.

And down the steps, his tail waving jauntily like a personal standard, Trouble came. He peered into the darkness, his ears flicking every which way, searching for danger. Seeing Gavin, the cat’s head bobbed up and he let out another warbling, questioning sound.

Gavin hung against his restraints, tears burning down his face. “Thank you, Trouble,” he whispered.

The cat, equally pleased with himself and Gavin, descended quickly, disappearing into the dark corners of the room. After a moment, Gavin craned his neck to try and see where the little animal had gone, but between the darkness and the encroaching piles of garbage, he could make out nothing.

“Trouble?” he asked.

The cat didn’t answer, and Gavin might as well have been alone again.

#

He didn’t realize he was humming and swaying tunelessly and without rhythm until someone cupped a hand to his cheek, turning him up towards the bright light. He’d missed the opening of the door. He hadn’t even heard the stairs creak.

“How’re you feeling?” Ward asked softly.

Gavin pulled his head away, shaking his head to try and rid himself of the hallucinations lurking in the corner of the room. “Don’t fucking touch me,” he rasped.

Ward held up his hands in quick surrender. “Okay,” he said easily. “I just came to give you some news. Your partner escaped into the forest but you knew that, didn’t you?”

The news did not soften the pit in Gavin’s stomach. There was something coming, a storm on the horizon. “Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“I think you have a right to know,” Ward said. “How Lucas died.”

“Fuck you.”

_He’s not dead._

_But then where is he?_

Gavin shook his head to negate the thought. He couldn’t afford to think that way. The sense of isolation was already sucking at him like a vacuum, ready to claim him if he gave just an inch.

“You sent him right into our trap,” Ward said softly. “You think we wouldn’t find the tracker? That we wouldn’t know exactly how to use it against you? The ambush was so quick, they barely knew what hit them.”

Gavin was tired, the pieces were… hard to see. But he hadn’t told them about the phone he’d hidden in the bomb casing. How could they know. It couldn’t… he couldn’t… “You’re lying,” he rasped out.

Ward knelt at his side, shaking his head slowly.

“If I was going to lie to you,” the anarchist said softly. “I’d tell you your little FBI puppet master died like a coward, begging for mercy. But I’m told he died well. Bravely, if a bot can really _be_ brave. You know, he thought you were there? That he could rescue you?”

“You’re lying,” Gavin repeated, shaking his head once, keeping his eyes fixed on the floor, away from Ward’s gaze.

“I wanted him alive. I wanted to take him apart slowly, right in front of you. I can do it, you know—keep them going as I strip down every component and break it in front of their little cameras. I could show you just how inhuman they are. But… he had to go and… be brave.”

Something slammed down onto the tray in front of Gavin. He flinched away from the noise, but when no blow, no pain was forthcoming, he looked back up into cold grey eyes fixed, dead, on his chest.

A head.

Gavin stared at it. The eyes and skin were still artificially bright. It looked like it should be breathing, speaking, rolling its eyes. His eyes. He stared, seeing the wet curls of the RK900’s hair dangling beneath that _stupid_ hat, the line of the android’s jaw that he’d seen so often in neon silhouette next to some burger-joint dumpster.

Lucas’s fucking head.

The denial came from his chest. His throat. Ragged and pitched unevenly like an animal. It wasn’t even a word, just disbelief and pain in a single sharp string of noise.

 _No, no, no, no. Nononono, Lucas, no_.

His friend. His last connection to the outside world. “Lucas _,”_ he managed to choke out. “Lucas—no. Fuck, _Lucas_.”

Ward pushed the head closer to Gavin, forcing him to see the matte-dead eyes, the frozen jaw. But Lucas was still _there_ right? He was saved? backed up? Androids didn’t need bodies— Not really, right? They didn’t need hearts or lungs or--

But he knew, even as hope flared and died, sparking weakly in this new terrible reality—it wasn’t true. Lucas was gone. Dead. He couldn’t look away. Yesterday, they’d been sitting in that awful, smelly car and—no. Not yesterday. It had been day. Or had it been weeks? He was confused, everything was tilting, breath rasping in his lungs.

Nobody was coming. He was alone.

“Now we have it under control. It’s happening tonight,” Ward said, but Gavin couldn’t really _hear_ him. His ears rang with static because _no. No. Lucas. No._ “In six hours. It starts with Detroit.”

This time they didn’t play the music. They left only one guard. But sleep had never been further away.

#

There was no one coming. He had to get out. He had to stop Ward. Lucas—

Lucas’s head peered sightlessly at him from across the room. Ward had left it there, a grisly reminder that it hadn’t been a dream. That Gavin was fucking _alone_ and the world was depending on him—millions of lives. Maybe billions.

But he was dying. There was no way he could be in this much pain and not be dying. Every part of him _hurt_ , down to the bones. He wrenched at his restraints. Step one would be to get out of this fucking room. That was as far as he could get in his panic—he just had to fucking get _out_. Everything else was secondary.

Even Lucas.

“Useless,” he whispered, trying not to look at the head resting on the table. “You idiot. Getting yourself killed—you _idiot. You_ fucking _idiot_.”

He sounded hysterical in his own ears, he couldn’t control the volume of his own voice. He only had six hours, but he had no concept of time down here while the trapdoor was shut.

“Moron,” he hissed, ignoring the fresh tears he was causing in the half-dry burn on his neck. “Piece of shit machine. Why would you choose me? Why would you—”

It was easier, suddenly, to hate the thing on the tray. This was all its fault. Every part of this. If it had been in any way _competent_ , they wouldn’t be here. “You deserve this,” he said to Lucas, feeling the words like daggers being thrust into his own chest and _good_ because he fucking deserved to die. “This is your fucking _fault_.”

There was no escape. His hands were bloody from where the cuffs had skinned his wrists. Even if he broke all of his fingers, there was no getting out of this. The chair wouldn’t move. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Still, he tried for hours, until he couldn’t feel his hands at all.

Until pain and numbness were muddled in his head. They were the same thing? Weren’t they?

Trouble curled up at his feet, sinking his large furry body over Gavin’s cold, scraped-up arches. The Detective could barely feel his legs anymore, or warmth, only the gentle pressure of the cat’s weight.

#

The cat was gone when Ward returned. Too soon. His footsteps were heavy on the stairs, his boots catching the evening-orange light.

His palm hit the back on the folding chair kept by the door, dragging it on two legs screeching and protesting to sit in front of Gavin. Gavin said nothing. He blinked at Ward. The other man’s expression didn’t give anything away, no laughter or anger, no depression or excitement.

He simply sat down on the chair, grasped his hands in his lap and blinked solemnly at Gavin.

“It’s done,” he said.

 _Lie. Liar. He’s lying_. Gavin raised his head far enough to glare at Ward. The man looked… tired.

“And I’ve got to be honest, Reed. I’m at a loss with what to do with you now. Set you free? Kill you? It feels like a mercy to kill you at this point and I really hate to dig graves anywhere on this land.”

“Liar,” Gavin spat.

Ward ignored the accusation, fixing his gaze on Gavin’s face, leaning forward with his hands clasped under his chin as if considering a chess problem. “Thing is, I’ve sort of grown attached to you. Our little chats. It’s honestly the most _enjoyable_ part of my day. I couldn’t see the expression on President Warren’s face when she learned about Detroit’s truly _biblical_ decimation, I can’t even go see the chaos out there on the streets. It’s just not safe enough yet to start establishing order. But you? I can see _all_ of it on your face, playing out in slow motion.”

“ _Liar_.”

He leaned back. “We’re going to hit the airports tomorrow,” he said. “Denver, Chicago, Dallas, New York, DC. Disrupt Transportation roots and give people time to get out of the cities, if they’re smart.”

Gavin shook his head. He couldn’t speak, only mouth the word. _Liar._

“Maybe I’m unwilling to let go of the fight. I have truly _enjoyed_ watching the pieces of globalist hypocrisy crumble under my feet. The dominos are still falling, but that’s not the least bit satisfying when I can’t watch them go, you know?”

“You’re lying,” Gavin whispered.

“When,” Ward asked, a grin twitching up on his lips. “Have I ever lied to you, Detective?”

#

He stopped fighting.

He barely heard the discordant, ear-shattering music anymore. It was just as loud, just as abrupt, just as out of sync with its beats, but Detroit was smoldering ash, millions of people were dead. Everyone he’d ever known was fucking _dead_.

It’s too big. Too much. Like gravity, he can’t… _understand_ the weight of it. Somehow it had never occurred to him that Orion could win. That Ward would _win_.

Gavin wasn’t a soldier. Not a spy. He was a goddamn police officer. He wasn’t trained for this shit. He was outnumbered, out-classed. Out in every goddamn way.

“That’s right. I can see you’re getting it now,” the whisper came from the darkness, soft and wild and fast.

He was so fucking tired, but he didn’t think he was ever going to sleep again.

And he was completely _alone_.

His captor’s voice was light and triumphant. Gavin couldn’t tell if it was real or not. “Your system is broken. Nothing matters now, if it ever did. No one’s coming, no one knows where you are and they’ve got _better_ things to deal with.”

The voice slithered closer. Snakes emerged from the shadows to writhe over Gavin’s skin, curling around his feet and legs, weighing him down into bottomless waters. His mind jumped from hallucination to hallucination, his imagination bolstered by the cold and dark.

“So tell me, Detective Reed,” Ward whispered between sharp teeth. “What did you tell them? What did they know, before the end? Did they see this coming? Did they have time to spread the news? To panic? Tell me _everything_ you told them _._ ”

Gavin’s breath stuttered in his chest. He couldn’t expand his lungs. He was dry-drowning again and they didn’t even need the goddamn water to do it. Everything was crashing, everything was spinning—He choked on his own saliva, heaving against his bonds because he couldn’t _move._ It’s all wrong. He’s dying.

“Pathetic,” Ward spat at him, gripping his neck and forcing him to meet his eyes. The touch was excruciating, the position of Ward’s hands, terrifying. Gavin bucked frantically, but the chair was solidly bolted to the floor.

“I gave you answers, Reed. I gave you a way to be free, and in return you betrayed me. You think I won’t kill you once this stops being fun? Talk to me. Tell me what I need to know.”

Gavin felt his eyes roll up, felt himself start to jerk unsteadily. The world strobed around him, and finally, _finally,_ unconsciousness took him.

#

He awoke to gunfire outside. That made sense. The world was no doubt on fire. He could imagine the headlines— _Detroit Destroyed_. _Millions Dead. Who Is Responsible?_

They’d switched the music off, finally, but he could still hear screaming. It echoed inside his head, worse than the music. Worse than anything else they could have done to him.

How long could someone survive without sleep?

Was that how Ward was going to kill him?

He was alone, finally and time greyed in and out. The pace of his breath was as unreliable as his vision now.

He could see people in the mountains of trash around him, faces and eyes in the rotting newspapers. So he didn’t look up anymore. He hung against the restraints, looking down at the grey concrete. It looked like water under his feet, dark and murky, deep enough to drown in.

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Someone whispered in the darkness. “Reed is that… is that you?”

Gavin looked up, searching the darkness in vain. He didn’t have the strength left to ask _who’s there_? But the lights overhead were too bright to make anything out of the darkness. He made the mistake of squinting up, trying to look, and found himself blinded, multi-colored sunspots taking over his vision.

“Hold on.”

A man, going by the voice. A man who wove around to his back and tugged on the ropes. Gavin couldn’t feel anything there, only the tug on his shoulder blades as his rescuer tried to undo the knots around his swollen fingers.

“I’m gonna get you out of here. Just… _fuck_.”

“They’re targeting airports next,” Gavin whispered. “We have to warn them—the cities were just the first—”

His rescuer slipped a hand over his face. “ _Shhh_ ,” they hissed. Their palm was warm, human.

But still, an ally.

Gavin mumbled against the hand, still trying to communicate the urgency of this news. He didn’t matter, there was still a chance to save thousands, _millions_ of people. “Leave me here, go. Go tell someone, _anyone_ that’s left—”

A cool blade slipped between his wrists, cutting away the over-tight bonds. He gasped out, hissing in pain as blood flooded into his joints. He was too weak to stop himself from falling forward. His rescuer snatched at his shoulder, pulling him back against the chair.

Gavin blinked up, his fingers clumsily clutching at the jacket in front of him. He could see the blur of iron-gray hair. The smallest hint of a truly _awful_ printed shirt. “Y--You…”

Hank knelt in front of him, a hand splayed against his chest. “Fuck, Gavin, I got you. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

“How are you… here?”

“We’ve been here for days, Reed. We’ve got the fucking FBI sieging the goddamn forest, but Fowler got tired of waiting and Perkin’s got another bloody nose to deal with.”

Perkins? The DPD? That… didn’t make sense. The Detroit police department was a thousand miles away, buried under a hundred tons of rubble. Was this really happening? Or was this another hallucination? Or was he hallucinating Hank in the place of a real rescuer?

Then why fucking _Hank_ of all people?

There were more questions than answers, and there. Was. No. Time. “You have to tell someone,” Gavin said urgently, his voice breaking hoarsely on every word. “The airports. They’re going to target the airports with trucks. They’re going to shut down transportation and then they’re going to—”

Footsteps on the stairs broke through his words— they were faster and more urgent that they’d ever been before. “ _Goddammit_ ,” Hank whispered. “Where the hell is Connor?”

 _Connor’s here_? Of course. He and Anderson were inseparable. Partners of the fucking century.

“Hide,” Gavin hissed, he leaned back, forcing his hands to grip each other behind the seat. It wasn’t easy, his joints refused to make those angles again, his bones protesting the abuse. Hank disappeared, into the mountains of junk, somehow managing not to cause an avalanche of trash.

Just in time as feet hit the concrete and strode confidently to Gavin.

The Detective looked up, into the barrel of a handgun, and Ward’s finger tightening on the trigger.

Somehow Gavin could sense there would be no more words. No torture or monologues. This was it.

Anderson was probably going to shoot from the darkness, if the old man was fast enough, but that wasn’t what Gavin wanted. His wet hair was in his eyes, but he grinned up at the anarchist.

And launched himself forward, pushing off from the chair that had kept him bolted to the floor.

It was his leverage now, and with strength born of desperation, rage, and the adrenaline of freedom, he tackled Ward to the floor. He was weak and in pain, but instinct took over. Desperation, fear, and anger fueled his sudden _necessity_ to feel Ward’s blood between his fingers.

He grabbed Ward’s head and cracked it on the concrete underneath them. The gun went off, barely grazing his side and Gavin knocked it away. He hit Ward’s head and neck solidly, mercilessly, until he had no control of his hands, until he could no longer even form a fist.

Pathetic. IF he could have choked the life out of the man, he would have, but his hands were ruined. _He was_ ruined.

Anderson caught him under the chest and pulled him away. He fought the Lieutenant with everything, but Hank was strong when he wanted to be. “ _Enough_ ,” the Lieutenant said. “Gavin, he’s down. He’s _down_.”

Down, but not dead.

Gavin wrenched forward, with the last of his strength, but it was nothing against Hank’s grip. He sagged, but the Lieutenant didn’t let him hit the floor. “I got you,” he said gruffly, his grip hesitant around the mess that had been made of Gavin’s throat. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of this place.”

“Fuck you,” Gavin whispered, confused. He had no idea who he was talking to, Hank or Ward or himself.

“Yeah,” Hank said drily. “Fuck you too, Gavin.”

Gavin couldn’t ask the necessary questions. Like what the fuck Hank was doing in Colorado, how he’d known where to find Gavin--None of it. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore, so he let himself be lifted onto Hank’s shoulder, and managed to scrape his feet on each step. Up and up where the air was easier to breathe.

The trapdoor led up into a dark storage room. There were windows, but they’d been covered by heavy blackout curtains. Makeshift tripods supported industrial lights around the trapdoor. Gavin toppled one as Anderson half-dragged him out of the basement.

And with dawning horror, he realized his count of day and night had been utterly controlled and contrived.

“How… how long have I been down here?” he asked.

“Three days,” Hank said.

 _Three days_?

He wavered and Hank caught him sharply before he could tumble backwards. “No…” he whispered.

It had to have been a week. A week _at least._

The door was only a few steps away. Gavin picked up the pace, finding the strength to stand on his own. It opened wide ahead of him, allowing a dark figure to enter, shoulders hunched with a gun held at chest height, scanning the room like he was fresh from the academy. Recognizing Connor, Gavin looked past him, to the forest outside.

He could see DPD uniforms and cars, red and blue lights flashing, catching on badges and belts. But… _how_? How were they here? Michigan was a bombed-out wasteland. There were no _cops_ left.

“Sorry I’m late,” Connor said.

No. Not Connor. The differences were subtle, but there. The voice. The posture, the height.

It was an RK900 in a black suit and blue tie, his hair neatly brushed around his ears.

Lucas.

“I gotta go find Connor,” Hank growled to the android. “Can you get him out of here?”

“Yes, of course.”

Hank set Gavin carefully against one of the wooden crates of guns, like he was just a prop in this bizarre play. Lucas came forward, into the flash of blue-and-red lights.

And it all came crashing down.

“Damn,” Gavin said, sagging further down, collapsing inward as he fixed his eyes on Lucas.

The cautious smile slipped away from his android’s face. “Gavin?” the RK900 asked softly, uncertainly. “What’s wrong?”

Gavin dragged in a breath and crumpled on the threshold. He couldn’t let it go, so he held it there, feeling it trapped inside his chest with the pain and disappointment. “Gavin?” Lucas said urgently, dropping to one knee in front of him. “Gavin? What’s wrong? Talk to me.”

He couldn’t speak. his body betrayed him, forcing the air out of his lungs in a harsh laugh. He lowered his head so he didn’t have to look at Lucas, burying his head in the crook of his arm. He laughed and laughed and laughed as Lucas touched him hesitantly, the android moving his hands from Gavin’s arm to shoulder to head to neck.

He laughed, and at some point the sound turned to sobbing, but he had no control over that.

“Hey,” Lucas said softly, moving even close to shield Gavin from the chaos around them. “Hey. Easy. Breathe. _Breathe_.”

 _It’s not like you have the braincells to spare_.

It wasn’t funny anymore. He didn’t want to hear it in the android’s voice so clearly.

“I’m so tired,” Gavin whispered. How could he be so tired in a dream? Ward had broken him. Body, mind, soul. Broken the world. Broken _everything_.

“I know,” Lucas said. “But we have to get you checked out.”

He pulled gently on Gavin’s wrist, drawing his attention to the open door, the night just outside his reach. Gavin yanked back, turning away. “No,” he said. It would hurt too much to wake up from that.

“Gavin?”

“Leave me alone,” he begged. “Just fuckin... leave.” It was gonna hurt to wake up from this anyway. This respite, this oasis in the torture, where Lucas was still alive and the DPD was still out there hunting the bad guys—it was going to hurt worse than everything else, to see it all disappear.

The RK900’s hands left his shoulders, finally. Gavin squeezed his eyes shut, tried to simulate the darkness, tried not to dream about Lucas’s voice outside calling for a medic. But nothing faded.

 _“I need a paramedic! I need some help over here!”_ It reverberated in his skull, Lucas’s voice begging for help that hadn’t come. That would never come.

He stood shakily, and backed away from the lights and sound.

Back down the steps into the darkness. The boards creaked under his bare feet, just the way they’d done whenever Ward had come to visit.

And Ward was still on the floor, Gavin stepped over him to reach his chair again. The scent of mold and stagnant water crept back into his nostrils where it belonged. He slumped back into the chair.

It would be seamless, to wake up now. It wouldn’t hurt nearly as much. At least he could enjoy staring at Ward’s body for a while longer. That was as much victory as he could handle in his dreams.

For a moment he appreciated the perfect replica of the room he’d somehow created in his mind. Lucas’s head was still there, on the tray in the corner. “Fuck,” he told it. His voice echoed slightly against the walls of trash, breaking raggedly in his own ears. “That almost got me.”

The steps creaked again, at a slower, more cautious pace. “Gavin?”

Lucas’s voice.

Gavin bent at the waist, covering his ears with his hands. _No. Not real._ “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice dulled by the thrum of his pulse.

Someone gently pried his hands away.

“What have you got to be sorry for, Gavin?” Lucas’s asked.

“I got you killed. A fuckin’ ambush. I should have seen that coming. I should have been more careful, but they knew everything. They set it all up and I got everyone killed,” Gavin said. “Ash and rubble and millions of people dead. Because of _me_.”

For a beat, there was only stillness and the muted shouts from above. Sirens as ambulances came and went.

And then: “Is that what they told you?”

“Shut up,” Gavin hissed. “Stop it. I need to accept this—the sooner I can _accept_ this, the sooner I can get out of here. I can kill that fucker for real. I can… I can…”

What? Go home? There was no home left for him. No apartment with a view of the river, no desk and free donut at the DPD. No river. No parks. No trees. “I know what’s real,” he said. “ _That’s_ real.”

He pointed to the head in the corner. To the real Lucas.

The simulacrum of the Agent followed the direction of his finger, and, seeing the head mounted on the table, walked cautiously towards it. Gavin watched him pick it up, and the lines blurred. Reality and dreams blending. He felt nauseous, ill. Maybe he was going to wake up now, mid panic-attack.

It would honestly be a relief. Was that funny? It might be funny.

“Oh,” the android whispered. His voice was strange, small and sad. Gavin had never heard it like that before. “What did they—”

“Just leave me alone. Just let me wake up,” Gavin said, putting his hands over his face and digging his fingernails into his forehead.

But the android returned to stand right in front of him. “Look,” he said, turning Lucas’s head into profile, slipping that stupid fisherman’s cap off. “Look.”

Gavin blinked tiredly, his vision blurred and he leaned closer.

On Lucas’s temple, dark and dead, was an LED.

His eyes travelled up, to the android standing in front of him. He didn’t have an LED. But that couldn’t be right—that couldn’t…

He reached up, tried to stand, and the RK900 helped him, carefully settling the disembodied head on the tray at his side as he helped Gavin onto his feet.

But once there, the Detective wavered, unsure. “It’s me, Gavin,” the android said cautiously. “There was no ambush. We found the shipment, we got the weapons and the bomb, ORION is being dismantled. Detroit still stands. Because of you.”

“We’re…” his voice broke. It was weak and wavering, all this time in the darkness. Weeks, months, or days? He was confused, mixed up. He swallowed his fear and tried again. “Are we still in Hell?”

“Not anymore,” Lucas said. “We’re going home. I’m taking you home, Gavin.”

Gavin leaned forward, digging his cold, clumsy fingers into Lucas’s jacket. The android was so fucking tall Gavin might as well have been leaning against a brick wall. he was cold and he was starting to remember that everything hurt.

The federal agent wrapped an arm around Gavin’s chest, holding him up. It wasn’t really an embrace, more a sort of crutch. “Come on,” he said, turning them, propping Gavin up against his side as if he could transmit his strength to Gavin via osmosis. “Let’s go.”

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Gorsh. i feel kinda sad to post this...
> 
> Healing, fluff, epilogue, and art to be found here tomorrow! I hope you enjoyed this! It took... such a long time to write and post, I literally have been bouncing off the walls I'm so eager to start reading the other works in the `finding home` collection for the New Era, if you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out the collection.


	12. Epilogue (֍)

He woke up to the room spinning and knew immediately he was in trouble. He tried to turn away from the light overhead, only to find that he’d been strapped down. His chest, wrists and shoulders were bound flat to something soft and warm.

Immediately, he went rigid, closing his eyes against the blinding white light above.

The lightbulb’s buzzing had changed—it was further away, blocked by other noises—quiet phones and soft voices, doors opening and closing.

“Gavin, It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re in a burn ward.”

He blinked rapidly until Lucas resolved into his view, the RK900’s usually stoic face creased only slightly, between the brows and around the eyes.

Gavin opened his mouth, tried to get some words out, but his throat was swollen and dry. He could say nothing.

“I have some water for you,” Lucas said softly. “But I’m going to release the restraints first so you can sit up. Be very careful how you move, they’ve given you a skin graft and it’s important you don’t roll over and contaminate the wound or break the stitches. Don’t nod. Don’t try to speak. Just blink if you understand.”

It took a minute for all of this to process. The last thing he remembered was climbing into a squad car. He must have fallen asleep. Time warped and blended together, and he had no idea what differentiated minutes from seconds anymore.

Lucas’s concern was turning to worry by the time Gavin remembered he’d been asked to blink.

He blinked.

He lay rigid as the restraints were removed, staring up at the ceiling and counting slowly in his head to try and break out of the pain. “I know you’re confused,” Lucas said softly. “I know you have questions, but we’ll take it slow. I’m going to help you sit up.”

Gavin’s throat burned as he pushed himself vertical, rejecting Lucas’s attempts to help. When he finally did make it upright, it was to find a glass of water held in front of him. “Slow,” Lucas warned him.

Gavin narrowed his eyes at the android, but did as he was told, taking little, desperate sips.

“You’ve been sleeping for almost twelve hours. They sedated you to scrub and patch your… wound but you still took a long time to wake up.”

“Where the fuck were you?” Gavin rasped.

Lucas suddenly couldn’t look at him. He leaned forward in his chair and covered his face with his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I tried. I really _tried_ to get to you.”

“They told me I was in Colorado,” Gavin whispered.

Lucas shook his head. “You never left the brewery. They were trying to destabilize you.”

“You knew where I was. I was in Hell. The whole fucking time.”

The RK900 couldn’t meet his eyes. “Reeves worked for the CIA for almost three years before he disappeared off the grid, he knew what he was doing.”

Gavin twitched his hand up a few inches and Lucas stopped until he could take a deep breath and ask: “Reeves?”

“Ward,” Lucas amended. “His real name is Edward Jackson Reeves. He’s old blood in Hell, one of the direct descendants of the man who founded the town with a tavern and distillery. The family fractured, and Reeves was raised in Texas, but he came back and patched up the old property in late 2023.”

This still answered _nothing_. “You knew where I was?” he rasped.

Lucas shook his head. “I tracked your phone first. I thought we’d find you dead in that crate, you know, but the bomb… that changed everything. All hell broke loose. The agency escalated the case and it was out of my hands. Literally. They gave it to a senior agent.”

“Androids?” The word was a strain, and Lucas waited pointedly until Gavin took another sip of water, grimacing as he swallowed slowly and painfully.

Once Gavin had settled back, LUcas continued. “I alerted Detroit PD to the situation, and gave them the numbers you had saved in your phone. They tracked the container to the municipal docks and managed to stop them before they were loaded onto a ship. The androids were unharmed, and they’ve been moved to Jericho for memory recovery, but I was under direct orders not to say anything to DPD or Jericho about the bomb _or_ Orion. It would have caused mass hysteria.”

He grimaced at an apparently uncomfortable memory. “Understandably they were unhappy that I could not share anything with them about where we had found twenty-seven blank androids. Jericho was already insisting that as US citizens, the president should be pressuring Russia to exchange trafficked androids and Perkins didn’t think the… politics would suit the Bureau’s agenda.”

Gavin opened his mouth and Lucas cut in. “Maybe we shouldn’t be talking about this now,” he said quickly. “You need to rest.”

Gavin shook his head, wincing as the movement pinched the damaged tissue on his neck. “Why didn’t you come for me?” he asked.

“We did.” Lucas said. They’d obviously reached the point he did not want to go over. “We set up a perimeter, but Perkins had Ward’s file by them—had read about his connections to Intelligence agencies, the potential network across the states. He didn’t want to move in without talking to Orion first. He wanted them to surrender, give up their connections willingly. That… delayed us.”

Gavin had admired Perkins. The agent closed cases, he was a political animal, not caring about optics or collateral as long as a job got _done._ He was also probably the only one the FBI would entrust with this case, and probably the only one that would willingly take it.

Especially after the deviancy fiasco.

“I wasn’t sure if you were still inside, or whether or not your cover had been blown,” Lucas said. “Orion established a perimeter early on—the place was like a fortress; we couldn’t get within a hundred yards or we’d start drawing fire.

“We were at a standstill and then they… they sent a photograph of…”

He swallowed, his voice breaking.

“Of you—in… the…”

Gavin pressed a heavy hand to his forehead—the picture Ward had taken, after burning the blood-drop from his neck. He’d seen that picture. He suddenly found it hard to look at the FBI agent—to know that Lucas had seen him like that.

It shouldn’t have mattered.

But t did.

“Someone sent it to the press.”

Gavin’s heart dropped. He felt sick.

“And then someone _talked_ to the press and they released the story about how you’d infiltrated the group and how you led the FBI to the bomb.”

_You think we wouldn’t find that tracker? That we wouldn’t know exactly how to use it against you?_ Gavin could hardly breathe. That picture was public? It was in the _news_? This was bad. This was really, really bad.

“And then it was a hostage situation,” Lucas rushed onward. “But Perkins wanted to call their bluff. He said you were probably already dead and that we—”

He looked away. “I couldn’t do anything,” he said. “He was going to have me arrested if I tried to take command of the field. I had no access to the SWAT team, no access to agents—they wouldn’t _listen_ to me. I was the very _last_ in the chain of command and I felt so helpless, So I… I went to Fowler. I sent the location to the DPD. And when they came… I broke Perkin’s nose so I could let them past the barricades.”

Gavin wheezed, coughing between exhales. “Should put a fuckin’ hinge on his face,” he whispered at last.

“Anderson said something similar,” Lucas said, but he wasn’t smiling. He looked devastated. “I’m so sorry Gavin. I should have gone in earlier. I should have… I should have done _something_.”

Gavin waved a dismissive hand in his direction and Lucas straightened in his seat. “Do you want me to leave?” the android asked softly.

Shaking his head ever so slightly, Gavin closed his eyes and relaxed back down onto the bed. “Stay,” he rasped. “Please.”

#

He woke up and dozed away, every single time, terrified it would all disappear. Lucas was there every time, sitting in the same chair, in the same position.

His doctor was a young woman with long dark hair who worked in quick efficient motions. She took no nonsense from Gavin, slapping his fingers away when he tried to feel the skin graft while it was open to the air.

“You were lucky there was no nerve damage,” she said, surveying her work.

“Well that would mean it would stop hurting, wouldn’t it?” Gavin rasped. “Not feeling that lucky, doc.”

“I promise you, you’re lucky. Burns like that one wouldn’t heal without a graft and with the infection settling in—I cannot impress upon you hard enough—you were in real trouble, Detective. You could have died.”

Gavin couldn’t meet her eyes. “I want to go home,” he ground out.

“You’ve just had a surgery,” Lucas broke in gently. “There’s a real risk that you’ll reject the transplanted skin, that you’ll get an infection—”

“I don’t care,” Gavin rasped. “You can’t keep me here. I _want_ to go _home_.”

“Actually, we _can_ keep you here,” the doctor said mildly, settling onto her heels. Clearly, she was used to dealing with hostile patients. “If you want to pay all of this off with your insurance—and I’m guessing you do, then we can’t release you to anyone except another hospital or advanced caregiver.”

Gavin set his mouth in a hard line. “Screw the fucking insurance,” he said. “If you think I—”

“I’ll take him,” Lucas broke in quickly.

Slowly, she turned her attention to the android, raising an eyebrow. “You have advanced caregiver training?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“When did you receive your certification?’

He hesitated, and Gavin cocked his head at the android until the RK900 conceded: “Fourty-eight seconds ago.”

“And your sixty hours of hospice experience?"

Lucas straightened, but Gavin could see the discomfort in the android’s posture. “I have to start somewhere?” he hazarded.

She glared at him, but Gavin could tell by the gentle slump of her shoulders that she was going to let it happen. He grinned and pulled the sheets off of his legs. Home. He was going home. If Lucas had to come with him—whatever.

He just couldn’t be… exposed anymore. He needed shelter.

#

Dust had settled onto the sofas, and specks of it wafting in the air like the spores from the underground basement. Light flooded in through the tall floor-to-ceiling windows. The couches were brown and made of well-oiled leather—accents to the Persian carpets, polished wooden floorboards, and the exposed-brick fireplace that took up the largest of wall space of the open floorplan.

“This is… nice,” Lucas said, obviously surprised.

“Take your shoes off,” Gavin growled.

His skin itched and crawled. He stayed in the entrance hall as the android leaned down to untie his shoelaces.

“What’s wrong?” the android asked as he straightened.

“I don’t feel any different,” Gavin said.

He tried on a smile to soften the words, but the muscles in his face failed to move in the right direction. “Still feels like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like at any moment…” he snapped his fingers. “I’m back there and I’m alone and no one’s coming and he’s never going to get out of my head—”

“Gavin,” Lucas interrupted, “You’re home. How can I prove that?”

It didn’t feel safe. It didn’t feel _right._ He wished he had his gun, the weight would have balanced him, settled his feet to the floor. He suddenly wished there was something… more here. His discomfort must have shown on his face, or maybe in his heartbeat because Lucas pushed past him.

“I’ll check the apartment,” he said. “You stay here?”

Gavin nodded. Any excuse not to step off the welcome matt and onto the floorboards. The entrance nook, meant for mud, coats, and shoes, felt like a haven from the unsteady sea just outside of it. Slowly, carefully, he leaned against the wall and worked his shoes off, feeling his newly grafted skin pull against every the movement.

The polished floors were too hard against the soles of his feet, they didn’t give or squeak. The air was warm. It smelled like dust.

There was no history to this place. He’d rented it out a few times and always felt a certain degree of pride for the minimalist furnishings, the impersonal, open-plan impression.

But now, looking around… there was nothing in this place that was… _his_. No photographs, no books, even the art was mostly stock, bought for specific color and size rather than because it held any personal value to him. Lucas had been surprised by the interior for good reason. This wasn’t his home. He just stayed here to sleep. Company stayed the night, was welcome to raid the fridge in the morning, but he had no interest in spending time here beyond that. He took care of the rooms. Possessed them like a ghost.

Lucas appeared from the hallway, the bedroom at his back. “I can find no evidence of intruders.”

“Finding no evidence,” Gavin rasped, trying for an awkward smile. “That’s kind of our thing, right?”

Lucas looked away, his shoulders hunching reflexively as if Gavin had struck out at him. But he didn’t argue, and a sour regret took hold in Gavin’s stomach.

“It was a joke,” he said.

“It was funny,” Lucas agreed flatly.

The dry emotionless tone could only have been sarcasm, and before the deadpan silence could get awkward, Gavin began to laugh. It wasn’t a _good_ laugh, he kept his neck stiff and every forced exhale sent a bolt of pain radiating from his neck through his whole body, but still. It felt a little bit like relief.

Lucas didn’t come towards him. Instead the android leaned against the hallway and looked down at the keys in his fingers until Gavin’s laugh had faded away.

“I wanted to go in,” he said. “Immediately. I didn’t want to wait.”

Gavin turned away, slowly tugging the jacket from his arms and shoulders. Talking about this was a waste of time and energy.

But Lucas, as usual, didn’t take the hint. “I should have pushed harder,” he said. “I should have called the DPD sooner. I knew it was the right thing to do from the start.”

“You did the best you could,” Gavin said. He couldn’t face the living room yet. The kitchen was easier. He slid his hand over the blank blackboard wall, feeling the edge of the light switch. He could barely remember being here alone, finding his way in the darkness and dead of night.

“Anderson didn’t hesitate.” Lucas said.

“Yeah, well Anderson doesn’t think,” Gavin muttered, opening the fridge. It was empty, he’d tossed everything perishable away before starting the assignment in Oaks correctional facility, when he didn’t know how long it would take.

When rotting food had been a legitimate worry, and anarchists, android slaves, and doomsday devices weren’t even clouds on the horizon.

Not that he’d ever stocked his refrigerator in the first place.

“I don’t need you to defend me,” Lucas insisted. “I let you down… I left you in a vipers’ nest and when I was told to stay put and watch, I did. I _left_ you there, with them. And they—they—”

“They what?” Gavin snapped finally, turning from the refrigerator. “What did they actually do, Lucas?”

The RK900 looked stunned for a moment, drawing back down. Suddenly he looked more like Connor than himself. Bowed and insecure. “Gavin—I—”

“You know I fucking _burnt_ androids,” Gavin hissed. “Drunk, after Jimmy kicked me out of the bar when the curfew started, and I just fucking… rounded them up.”

The agent had gone mute, his eyes fixed in horror on Gavin’s face. “Come on, this isn’t a fucking surprise,” The detective hissed. “I’m a goddamn war criminal, Lucas. You knew that. I know you knew that because why the _hell_ else would you give me this job, that backstory?”

Lucas looked away, maybe out of shame, and Gavin didn’t want that. “Come on,” he said. “I know what it smells like, burning thirium. I know what it _feels_ like to kill So what did Ward actually _fucking_ do, Lucas? He lied to me? He burnt the fucking blood-drop off my neck? What the fuck does it matter what they—”

“They hurt my friend.”

The words were solid, ungiving, and somehow they echoed in the small apartment. Gavin looked away first. He didn’t want to… feel anything. It hurt too much, to be grateful. “I was fine,” he said at last.

The silence was increasingly strange. But any words seemed… inadequate.

“I can’t forgive you,” Lucas said at last.

Gavin felt it like slap, he looked away, stepped backwards, like he was going to run from his own fucking apartment. But he stayed. There was nowhere else to do. Except maybe off the balcony, and that wasn’t going to fix anything.

“Would you like to sleep?” the RK900 asked evenly, as if none of that had happened.

“I don’t know.”

“Sleep,” Lucas decided for him.

Gavin nodded. “Can I shower first?”

The android blinked at him. “Yes?” he said, uncertainty wavering through every letter of the affirmation, drawing it out almost comically.

Gavin rolled his eyes. “I’m not asking for your permission,” he said. “I mean do I have to do anything about this shit on my neck?—wrap it up or—”

“Oh, yes,” the android nodded eagerly. “I have plastic sheets and adhesive tape. We can do it here if you like.

It was not as clumsy or awkward as Gavin thought it would be. He fixed his gaze on the windows on the opposite side of the room, his head bent so that Lucas could carefully pull the bandages away and survey the warped skin beneath.

“It looks like the tissue is taking, the swelling has gone down.”

Gavin hummed an affirmative, Lucas’s touches were feather light as he neatly cut the plastic to size and shape. His eyes caught on the skyline outside the windows—Detroit in the afternoon sun. Light glittered from the skyscrapers. A few of the brightest advertisements tried to beat that incandescent light, and failed.

The city was beautiful, in a cold, sharp kind of a way. Even the darkest blackest, most broken alleyways had history.

There was an eerie quietness to the apartment, and he felt like he was underwater, like the sound of crashing drums and screaming was hiding somewhere close by.

“Where’d they get your hat?” he asked softly. “And that head?”

“They must have trafficked a Nines at some point and kept some… parts. And my hat, I left in a pond so they’d think I was hiding in the water. They must have collected it and…“

Exhaustion rolled over Gavin, a physical weight on his head and shoulders.

“You think you’ll get another tattoo?” Lucas asked softly, his hands quick and sure as he tore precise strips off the roll of medical adhesive.

“No,” Gavin said dully. “I’ll take the fucking scars.”

#

Ward hummed in the darkness.

Gavin woke up heaving for breath, scrabbling for the edge of the bed. It was too big, too soft, and he fought against the sheets and blankets. He had to get to his feet, he had to be able to run, to fight, but couldn’t find purchase.

His throat had closed and his lungs couldn’t expand. He heaved for breath, the taste of stagnant water between his teeth.

The door opened at the light flicked on.

He blinked away the spots of brightness from his vision as he writhed for the edge of the mattress, finally falling over it onto the floor, breathing roughly.

“Gavin?” Lucas called urgently. “Gavin—What’s—”

He pushed up a hand to stop Lucas from coming any closer. The android wavered at the edge of the room. “Okay,” he said softly, just over the roaring in Gavin’s ears. “I’m going to get your medication and I’ll be right back.”

He disappeared and when he came back, he came closer only long enough to put the bottle of medication on the floor in front of Gavin.

But the Detective didn’t take it.

Gavin closed his eyes and let his breath shudder through him. It took him a long time to gain control over his breathing, but the android didn’t rush at all, just kneeling a few feet away, his hands planted on the floor like he was taking a knee for a downed teammate.

And the world slowly came back into focus.

With difficulty, Gavin half-rolled towards the shutters and pulled them out of the way. Below, the city glittered like a cold blue galaxy. The streets far below shone like spun gold.

“You with me, Reed?” Lucas asked softly.

“Yeah,” Gavin huffed. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You’ve strained your stitches,” Lucas said softly. “I’m just going to put some antibiotic cream on it, okay?”

Gavin raised a hand to his neck and pulled it away a little bloody. He hadn’t even felt the pain until Lucas had reminded him of it.

Finally, Lucas came closer and they didn’t speak as the android treated and re-covered the burn.

Only once Gavin had dragged himself back onto his bed did Lucas speak. “I’ll stay here,” he said. “If you take that medication, I’ll stay at the door and make sure no one comes in to disturb your rest.”

Gavin wiped a shaking hand across his forehead. “And you’ll leave if I don’t?” he rasped.

Lucas shook his head. “No, if you don’t, I will boil some water for tea and tell you the difference between cashmere and merino wool.”

Gavin laughed despite himself. He could feel his heartbeat slowing, just a little bit, but Lucas’s presence was still… uncomfortable. “I’m wasting your time,” he said at last.

“No, you’re not.”

Gavin drew himself up, curling his arms around his knees. His T-shirt didn’t fit right, it pulled across his shoulders and cut into his arms. He’d gotten strong while inside Orion’s compound, not even a few days starved and tied up had made a dent in his new muscle mass. “I feel so fuckin… fragile.”

“Fragile is not the word I would use.”

He didn’t look up, he didn’t want to encourage the RK900 to continue. Didn’t want to hear what the android thought the right word was—there were many that applied: _Unstable. Damaged. Broken._

Lucas waited there for minutes, maybe hours. Until Gavin turned onto his side and closed his eyes and disappeared into dreams of a burning city and a forest he couldn’t escape.

#

He wasn’t ready to go back to work. Not yet, and for once Fowler seemed to respect that. Gavin wasn’t sure if he liked that or not. He didn’t want to be treated any differently, but he couldn’t face the bullpen just yet either.

Now that he knew the precinct had seen the frozen image of him in that dark basement, his neck blistered and torn and bruised, his face gaunt and afraid—

He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to be around anyone who had seen it.

Lucas pushed him though, and in ways that didn’t feel big, but somehow _were_. Like taking him here. To this tiny municipal building a few miles outside of Hell. “I can go in for you,” Lucas said once they’d parked.

“No,” Gavin said. He peered up, over the dashboard to the front of the building. “I want to do this.”

Lucas had called ahead and the receptionist took them straight to the back. “He’s been in quarantine since we got him. Not that he’s sick or anything, he just tends to scare off any potential fosters. I’m glad you called when you did, poor little man wasn’t looking at much of a future.”

Gavin heard the broken, unhappy yeowls long before he even saw the cage. “One at a time, I’m afraid,” the tech said, raising his voice slightly over the death-rattle moans coming from the small, glass-walled room full of metal cages. “Which one of you wants to take a look?”

Lucas settled back immediately, crossing his arms against his chest as Gavin twitched his hand up, feeling like he was volunteering as some kind of sacrificial tribute.

“Alright, Come on in.”

Inside, Gavin could finally see into the cage, where two vivid green eyes stared at him. Furious. The cat looked a little worse for wear in that tiny cramped cage, as far back from the bars as possible. Gavin swallowed thickly as the door opened.

Trouble gave a short, sharp hiss of warning.

“Thank you, Trouble,” Gavin said softly.

He reached into the cage and the cat growled a warning, but it was curious now. Gavin reached out to the cat’s chest and received a long, deep scratch.

He didn’t flinch but found a hold on Trouble’s small, wiry body, drawing him, kicking and hissing, out the front of the cage. He and Trouble had been through much worse.

“He’s an old man,” the tech said, standing well clear as Trouble sank his claws into Gavin’s forearm, fighting for his freedom. “But surprisingly spry.”

The room was too narrow for Gavin to turn with his arms outstretched, he was forced to bring Trouble withing striking range of his chest. Thankfully, his talons only caught on his coat. “Rip my stitches,” Gavin warned the cat. “And there will be trouble.”

A deep, guttural warble answered him and he rolled his eyes. “Yes, thank you.”

He hadn’t realized that the tech was taking a picture of him until he looked up into a camera and the fake shutter-click of capture. “Adorable,” the shelter volunteer said cheerfully. “I’ll email it to you with his paperwork.”

“I’ve never really… done this kind of thing before,” Gavin said, gritting his teeth and he slotted Trouble into the carrier. It was smaller and darker than the cat’s last hiding place, but now that he was inside, the cat clenched his claws even more tightly into Gavin’s flesh. “The whole… pet thing.”

“Up front,” the tech said. “We got toys and litter and litterboxes—he’s going to be an indoor cat, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Gavin said, extricating Trouble’s claws one by one and leaving a grumbling, hissing furball backed into the furthest corner of the carrier. “In an apartment.”

“That’s what we like to hear.”

Lucas was not where he said he would be, but the anxiety barely had time to set in Before Gavin found the android again, bowed on one knee in a small room at the end of the hall. Trouble was having a meltdown in his cage, yowling long and loud, and setting all the other animals off.

Gavin knocked lightly on the door, and the RK900 stood, turning as he did.

A small ginger kitten had curled up in his hand. It was tiny and fluffy and its tail had curled up under the android’s palm in a half-claiming, half-balancing grip. Its head was fully supported on the crook of Lucas’s elbow and its eyes were heavy-lidded, a picture of blissed-out comfort.

“I want this one,” the android said, with all the firm confidence of a child.

Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?” he said skeptically, unsure if this was a bit he was supposed to play along with. Trouble grumbled in his cage, shifting uneasily so that the carrier swayed in Gavin’s grip.

“Her name is Mischief,” Lucas reported.

And Gavin didn’t feel like arguing.

#

Trouble was not an easy cat to keep. He took to the litterbox more often than not, but once he’d found that there was only one door and Gavin would not open it for him, he hid under furniture and on top of the fridge, hissing and swiping at anything that came close, even accidentally.

He did _not_ like Mischief, who was still getting used to the length of her legs. She climbed the furniture and pant legs and curtains and found Trouble’s tantrums fascinating. She’d sit on her haunches directly in front of his exit and watch him growl, hiss, and moan with wide eyes, cocking her head as if trying to puzzle out his meaning.

But as the days wore on and Trouble’s stitches healed, his food coming regularly and constantly, The cat gained a few pounds claimed the apartment. Lucas bought cat toys, which Trouble wouldn’t exactly play with, but sit on and keep from the kitten for no other reason than jealousy.

Gavin watched them. He didn’t want to turn on the TV. He didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. There were people outside, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to have anything to do with them either. Lucas stayed, long after Gavin’s neck healed, the android kept coming back to the apartment and sitting on the couch.

The talk wasn’t as easy as it used to be, when they were sitting in some shitty junker-for-hire arguing about the case or catching up on precinct gossip and the outside world. Gavin had felt like he was missing everything, but now, back in the cradle of civilization, it felt like nothing had changed except him.

He could do nothing but lie in bed, watching the snow fall over the city, and it wasn’t an easy day. It felt like there were no easy days left.

When Lucas came back from the field office, he opened the bedroom door, but Gavin didn’t roll over or acknowledge him, and the android quietly let the door close again.

#

“Make no mistake,” Fowler said. “We want you back, Reed. We need you back. The department is growing at an alarming rate, we’re looking at splitting up the precinct to work closer to Jericho but we just do not have enough Detectives to do it yet.”

Gavin steeled himself. “But?” he asked.

“But you need to work with us. With the department. Psych cleared you, barely, to come back. I want to see that improve. I’m going to put you with a partner, android or human, and I don’t want any more drama in the station over it.”

Fowler paused and Gavin waited for a minute before realizing the captain was done.

“That’s all?” he asked blankly.

“You want more?”

“No sir.”

“Sir?” Fowler said, quirking an eyebrow, sitting back in his chair. “I haven’t had a ‘sir’ from you for anything except a direct order in almost four years. What the hell happened to you, Reed?”

The silence spoke louder than words ever could have.

“Sorry,” the captain offered at last, realizing his mistake.

“No,” Gavin said, forcing a smile. “That’s alright. I agree. I want a partner and I’ll work with the doctors. I’m already booked into post-trauma counseling already and the FBI’s covering a de-programming course which I don’t feel like I need, but I’m willing to do.”

The captain nodded his approval, stretching out his hand to shake on it. “Good. You start next Wednesday, that’ll give us enough time to get all your clearance back.”

#

Walking out of the precinct, he felt better than he had in… months. Maybe longer. The talk with the captain had been weighing him down since he’d booked the meeting last week. He honestly thought he might get fired, but for what he could not say.

He’d taken one of the fast-acting meds before he’d even gotten out of his car, which he’d commanded to stay parked and running in front of the building like a getaway vehicle.

But no one had spoken to him inside. Not even Anderson or Connor, and they hadn’t seen or spoken to him since the night they’d broken him out of the compound. There was no love lost… or won. They had come for him because he was DPD, not because he had any actual friends on the force.

The entire precinct had all completely ignored him, which was only a little bit awkward since he knew that they had all seen a picture of him mid-torture. The message was clear to him—he had their loyalty, but not their affection.

He didn’t want to think about what they had done when they’d received it. But as soon as he’d started that track, he couldn’t stop.

Had they kept it? Laughed at it? Rolled their eyes?

Did they think he’d deserved it?

His heart was starting to beat against his ribs, despite the medication he’d taken, but he walked as calmly and slowly as possible, down the steps to the sidewalk. He breathed the cool air in deep and tried to remember that it was over. He wouldn’t have to come back until Wednesday.

Then he would be back at work and they would all have jobs to do. It didn’t matter what they thought—

He felt something was wrong even before his car started. He didn’t know what it was, but the second the door closed, and the dashboard let out the little blip that told him it was waiting for a destination, he knew _something_ was about to happen.

And it happened almost in slow motion, in an increasingly alarming sequence.

An angry whir started for half a second.

Hadn’t he left it on?

And then a maelstrom of pink glitter exploded from the air vents, which had all been turned up to their maximum setting. Scrabbling frantically at the panel for the dials and switches, he was forced to lean forward and got a face-full of the powder.

Giving up on the dials, spluttering and coughing out panic and mouthfuls of dry powder, he pushed pulled at the door handle and tumbled out onto the snowbank built up around the edge of the road, a puff of pink glitter dusting the drifts around him. A cloud of it followed him out the car door and was quickly whisked away by the strong, steady wind.

Gavin lay on his back and coughed up into the sky and when the roaring in his ears had faded, he was suddenly aware of laughter, a _cascade_ of laughter. He raised himself onto his elbows and looked back up the steps, where the entire precinct was standing outside the buildings with their phones out, filming it.

He groaned and slumped back onto the icy sidewalk.

“I was sworn to secrecy,” Lucas said gravely.

Gavin blinked his eyes open to find the RK900 standing above him in a long, bright red peacoat. “What are you doing here?” he asked, wiping at his eyes.

Lucas grinned and pulled a hand from his pocket, offering it to Gavin. Reaching up, the detective saw his own hands covered in neon-pink glitter. It was so fine hit had stuck to his skin like paint. Lucas hauled him upright with the barest amount of effort.

“How do I look?” he asked, keeping his back to the crowd outside the doors.

Lucas considered him for a moment. “I like it,” he said at last.

“Yeah, you would,” Gavin sighed, dusting his own jacket, making the mess even worse.

He steeled himself, set a smile on his face and turned to the crowd. The sight sent a renewed peal of laughter through the assembly. There were officers, detectives, even the captain bowed over the railing a grin on his broad, stern face.

Pedestrians and civilians had stopped as well to watch this completely unprofessional display.

He raised his arms, showing off the extent of the damage, turning in a circle to whistles and applause from his colleagues. Lucas reached into the car and switched off the vents for him.

Gavin waited and was slightly pleased to see that the android had managed to acquire a light dusting of the glitter as well. “So you just came to see this?” he asked. “I thought we were friends, Luke.”

The android grinned, his teeth glittering in the mid-morning light. “It wasn’t the _only_ reason I’m here.”

“Yeah, what then?”

“I’ve got an interview,” he grinned, “Fowler says you need a partner.”

It took a moment for that to parse through Gavin’s head, he blinked up at the android, wondering what piece he was missing.

“I’m not gonna let you take a demotion for me,” he said, as soon as he realized Lucas was _not_ in fact joking. “No fucking way.”

“Well,” Lucas said. “I’ve proven androids are capable of being more than glorified desk-jockeys and I’m no longer a probationary agent, which means I have to be promoted. All the way up to working directly with Perkins.”

Gavin paused. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I don’t really see this as a demotion,” the android grinned.

#

Inside, after everyone had taken their slices of cake and scattered back to their desks, Gavin pulled Miller into a hug. “Congrats, man,” he said.

The officer pulled away with a wide smile. “We’re glad to have you back.”

Gavin shook his head ruefully. “No, you’re not,” he said. “But you will be.”

Miller’s grin faded. “Everything okay?” he asked softly, slightly turning his body against the crowd of officers. “I know that glitter thing was a bit much on your first day back, I wanted to wait a couple days, but—”

“I’m fine,” Gavin insisted. “Really. I am. I just want to get back to work, you know?”

He spotted Lucas watching them both and waved slightly in his direction as Miller nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I get that. You think you’re gonna be able to work with the tin-can this time?”

Gavin winced. “He doesn’t really… like that,” he said. “The tin-can stuff.”

Miller’s brows furrowed but he nodded, glancing towards Lucas. “Okay. Yeah.”

Yeah, this was awkward

“I think he’s, like, mostly titanium anyway.”

Miller, who had been taking a sip of his soda, snorted so hard that most of it ended up on his face. Gavin slapped his back, maybe a little harder than was necessary.

#

“I got you half an hour,” Perkins said as Gavin handed his gun through the security checkpoint. “That’s about how long it’ll take for the lawyers to hear about it.”

The agent’s voice was slightly nasal. Both of his eyes were deeply bruised, his nose was setting under a fresh new bandage, and Gavin tried not to grin thinking about Lucas getting in a right hook. The android wasn’t here, he’d refused to come, maybe in the hopes that it would stop the detective, but he needed to be here, to get the last word, or he was never going to stop waking up in the middle of the night, imaginary arguments playing out in his head.

“I appreciate it,” Gavin said.

“My bet is he won’t talk to you,” Perkins muttered. “He won’t even talk to his lawyer. We can’t get a word out of him, but I figured it was worth a try.”

Gavin nodded as the security gate opened and a guard beckoned him through to the hallway and walked him down the depressing brick walls. It felt odd to be back here. His three months in prison felt like a lifetime ago, fleeting and unreal.

He could only remember the darkness of solitary—back when the concept of isolation and dark rooms didn’t break him into a cold sweat. The walk to the visiting chamber was mercifully short, it didn’t give him enough time for misgivings or second thoughts.

This was a maximum security lockup. There were no tables set up for prisoners to interact with lawyers or visitors.

Instead there was a wall of glass and small booths set up along it—only five or six. All were empty except for the central one.

Edward Jackson Reeves sat on the other side of the glass, two prison guards flanking his shoulders, one android, one human. Ward looked like a completely different person under the hard, fluorescent lights. Older. Dirtier. Somehow… crumpled and rumpled. In Gavin’s nightmares he always wore that fucking hat, without it… he seemed small and ordinary.

Also, he looked much worse than Perkins. His face was still lumpy with the effects of Gavin’s assault. His lips were split, his nose twisted and his cheeks bruising with all the colors of sunrise.

Gavin pulled back the chair and carefully sat down in front of the glass.

“Hello Ward,” he said.

Ward’s eyes fixed on Gavin’s, narrowing slightly.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk. I’m not really hear for anything you have to say.”

He settled back into his chair, crossing his arms. “I think you failed to understand something… fundamental about humans, Ward. I think in all that garbage about systems and ambition and inferiority complexes, you lost sight of where power actually comes from.”

He leaned forward. “People chase really _dumb_ things, Ward, when they’re lonely, and I think you’re really fucking lonely.”

He shook his head, rubbing at the fresh scars on his neck, the bubbles of swollen tissue and stretched flesh. “You know, for a while I wished Anderson had let me kill you. I honestly thought you deserved to die. I was… _disappointed_ that they put you on suicide watch. I wished someone would fall asleep on the job, turn their back long enough for you to lean on a rope you’d made out of your own underwear, and then… I was at work the other day, eating cake that my department bought to celebrate the end of this case, and I realized, this is actually the _best_ outcome.”

He smiled. “Three meals a day provided by the state? A dead weight on the system you tried to destroy? You’ll never have the opportunity to work for anything again because you _more_ than lost, Ward. You’re utterly dependent on the thing you tried to destroy. You are _useless,_ and you’ll never have power over anything again, least of all your own life.”

Ward’s gaze was calm, stony. His eyes tracked Gavin as the Detective stood, his jaw set in a rigid, mulish line. Gavin grinned at him, a quick, lopsided mockery of humor.

“Hey Ed,” he whispered, leaning closer, pressing his hand to the glass in emphasis, “ _Power through_.”

The guard whistled a warning and the Detective pushed himself away from the glass, turning his back on Ward. His hands were shaking, so he buried them in his pockets.

#

He shuffled his shoes off at the door, ruffling his hair over his forehead. He stopped in the hallway, looking over the kitchen counter to the large living room, the exposed-brick fireplace and the dark leather couches.

There were new things too—Lucas’s bicycle helmet hung on one of the stools—a long white rain coat and thigh-high white boots arranged neatly at the door. A crocheted lilac blanket Connor had found at a thrift store for him and art ready to be framed and put up on the wall.

Lucas himself sat in the corner of their apartment, his feet balanced on the coffee table, his brows furrowed in concentration as he read the complete works of Shakespeare, or played through some stupid application in his head.

Trouble stretched out in the sun, awkwardly licking the ruff of fur on his shoulders. Sunlight danced from the tiny golden tag on his collar, cast onto the wall opposite where Mischief patted at the reflection, trying to catch the glimmer.

He’d said no Christmas decorations, but on the kitchen counter was the tiniest of rosemary trees trimmed into a conical shape, complete with miniature tinsel and tiny gold-red ornaments. Gavin huffed out a laugh, setting his keys next to it. Give the RK900 an inch, and he’d take that inch and hang on until everything unraveled.

He’d make a damn good detective.

Trouble, deigning to notice his presence, moaned out a welcome in the same quavering vibration as a smoker’s death rattle.

“Thank you, Trouble,” he and Lucas said in unison.

Mischief started at the sound, turning with a curious little ‘ _murr?’_ to see what had caused her humans to speak. Gavin set his elbows on the counter and blinked at the kitten.

“How was it?” Lucas asked, his eyes still closed, not stirring from his place on the couch.

Gavin shrugged, though he knew the android couldn’t see him. “Not much to say,” he said. “Would be nice if they were blasting some shitty punk rock into his cell at night and dangling heads in front of him, but I’ll take what I can get.”

“I’m glad you’re home,” Lucas said, gliding past _that_ unhealthy insight into Gavin’s vindictive nature. “I think I want to try a new hobby.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Spaghetti.”

“Spaghetti isn’t a hobby. It’s a… food. Or something.”

“It could be a hobby for androids.”

Gavin rolled his eyes and rounded the countertop to drop onto the other side of the couch. He’d forgotten how comfortable his own couch was. “You’re fuckin’ weird,” he informed his partner. “But go for it. I’ll eat spaghetti.”

Mischief jumped onto the couch and then onto his lap, delicately planting her paws on his stomach. Without looking down he cupped his hands around her, supporting her back as she tackled the the cord on his hood.

His eyes slid closed on their own. Lucas would wake him when dinner was ready.

He was tired.

And happy.

And home.

## #END#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isn't that gorgeous? All hail the magical, the mystical Tes. Please check out her @[Tes_273](https://twitter.com/Tes_273)
> 
> And we have reached the end! I hope you enjoyed, if you did, please consider leaving me a comment telling me what you enjoyed and what you... maybe didn't XD I'd like to keep writing Detroit fanfiction for a while, and I'd love to know what I should maybe focus on in future fics.


	13. Author's and Artist's Notes (֍)

I would like to thank TesIsAMess so much and suggest you follow her and her art on twitter @[Tes_273](https://twitter.com/Tes_273). This fic really would have probably stalled out if not for her notes and comics given to me while she read and plotted out illustrations

I really really enjoyed working with her. And I wanted to share some of the fun times we had working on it with you guys.  
  
 **(Yo, Tes here wedging myself in in bold. Aly says some really nice words below, so to not break their flow I'd like to take a second to say that this big bang was such a joy to work on and I can't believe it's over. Aly gave me a wonderful story and I was trying my darnedest to make something that could live up to it. It was really fun to collaborate with someone so enthusiastic and who had such a big story to tell, they're a hecking writing machine and just all around great person and I'm so glad we were paired up. I hope you guys liked the fic as much as I did! Go give them some love!! Ok now onto my dumb comics)**

In the first chapter or two of this fic, Lucas was actually named Ronin, which was a few letters to similar to Orion and was... admittedly, maybe the wrong choice for an RK900. I played around with a few names, but ultimately Tes gave me Lucas, a main character from a game called 'Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy.' It took me a while to wrap my head around it, but now I can't see him as anyone but Lucas.

I'm gonna go check out the game as soon as I have time. Every spare moment of the past month has been consumed by writing, editing, and researching this fic. Check out that Christmas sweater though guys, you know Lucas is wearing one right now. Tes is so good at little touches like that, finding the details of a character that really bring them alive. Speaking of... 

Ward was not originally a Texan, and did not have a hat, but Tes read a Texan with a hat, and the character is based on a Texan man I know, so... just one of the many instances of her psychic powers. Another one would be guessing that the RK900 head would still have its LED-- that last little push Gavin needed towards sanity.

The first soft moment. Let me tell you though, Tes was rooting for me to kill someone. She loves the Major Character Death tag which personally scares me. Still, I almost, almost _almost_ killed Lucas and destroyed Detroit because I knew she'd love it. And then I remembered it was Christmas and I really did actually need to tie this to the theme *Finding Home*, So Lucas, Gavin, and I narrowly scraped past tragedy.

You gotta give it to Tes though, she has that dark sense of humor that I love:

Isn't that perfect? I really did use that line without even thinking about the pun, and really... I should have. XD

In the gif in chapter 2, I misunderstood a message from Tes and thought there was a frame or two of Lucas's message ' _I apologize._ ' I waited for longer than I'd like to admit to see it, thinking the whole time like _damn, how long is this loop?_ XD I gone done got pranked. Also in that gif, Gavin has green eyes and his blood-drop tattoo is on his neck. I unfortunately couldn't get it high-res enough to show it on the gif in Ao3, but here's a still screenshot for ya:

Lucas's bold fashion choices were also a result of miscommunication. I had a grave misconception of what a fisherman's cap actually was. I have a crochet pattern for a fisherman's cap which actually would be more aptly described as a 'beanie' but between that and Lucas's initial 'human costume' his clothing arc was born.

This has made the last month bearable. I really enjoyed writing it, and right now, as I'm typing out these words, we still have about a week left before it posts. I really am insanely nervous for how it's going to be received. It really is like a Christmas gift I wanted to give the fandom. If you've made it this far (and I really hope you do) this was for you. 

Have a Festive Winter and a Happy New Year, wherever, whoever, and whenever you are!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to TesIsAMess for reading along as I wrote this and being a solid, solid sounding board to bounce some of my crazier ideas off. All of the art is hers! If you're not already on the New Era Discord, you can join us there to talk the game, memes, and a million other topics :D
> 
> https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm


End file.
